Publishing Timeline

Copies of Acta Diurna ("Daily Events", or the "Daily Public Record"), were carved on stone or metal and presented in message boards in public places like the Roman Forum beginning about this time. They were also called simply Acta or Diurna or sometimes Acta Popidi or Acta Publica. These are thought to be the first daily gazettes.

"Their original content included results of legal proceedings and outcomes of trials. Later the content was expanded to public notices and announcements and other noteworthy information such as prominent births, marriages and deaths. After a couple of days the notices were taken down and archived, (though no intact copy has survived to the present day).

"Sometimes scribes made copies of the Acta and sent them to provincial governors for information. Later emperors used them to announce royal or senatorial decrees and events of the court.

"Other forms of Acta were legal, municipal and military notices. Acta Senatus were originally kept secret, until then-consul Julius Caesar made them public in 59 BCE. Later rulers, however, often censored them" (Wikipedia article on Acta Diurna, accessed 07-31-2009).

"We hear nothing of a book trade at Rome before the time of Cicero. Then the booksellers and copyists (both initially called librarii) carried on an active trade, but do not seem to have met the high standards of a discriminating author, for Cicero complains of the poor quality of their work (Q.f. 3-.4.5, 5.6). Most readers depended upon borrowing books from friends and having their own copies made from them, but this too demanded skilled copyists. It was perhaps for such reasons that Atticus, who had lived for a long time in Greece and there had some experience of a well-established book trade, put his staff of trained librarii at the service of his friends. It is not easy to see whether Atticus is at any given moment obliging Cicero as a friend or in a more professional capacity, but  it is clear that Cicero could depend on him to provide all the services of a high-class publisher. Atticus would carefully revise a work for him, criticize points of style or content, discuss the advisability of publication or the suitability of a title, hold private readings of the new book, send out complimentary copies, organize its distribution. His standards of excecution were of the highest and his name a guarantee of quality" (Reynolds & Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, 3rd. ed. [1991] 23-24).

The first mention of literary works published in parchment codices is found in Martial, a Latin poet from Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula) best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between 86 and 103 CE.

". . . in a number of poems written during the years 84-86. He emphasizes their compactness, their handiness for the traveller, and tells the reader the name of the shop where such novelties can be bought (I.2.7-8). Athough there is one surviving fragment of a parchment codex written about A.D. 100 (the anonymous De Bellis Macedonicis, P. Lit. Lond. 121) the pocket editions that Martial was at pains to advertise were not a success. The codex did not come into use for pagan literature until the second century; but it rapidly gained ground in the third, and triumphed in the fourth" (Reynolds & Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, 3rd ed., [1991] 34).

"The poet Martial, writing in or near 85 A.D., described codex books, though not using that term for them. In perhaps the clearest of his several references, he described a book containing the works of Homer in 'muliplici pelle,' much-folded or many-layered leather. The context of his references suggests that the codices he had in mind were curiosities, his general point being that by this means (as compared to the standard alternative, the roll) a substantial text could be contained in quite a small, handy volume. His precise meaning is not certain; some scholars have conjectured that Martial was describing books in minature scripts" (Needham, Twelve Centuries of Bookbindings 400-1600 [1979] 4).

Roman author and grammarian Aulus Gellius published Noctes Atticae (Attic Nights), a miscellaneously arranged commentary, or compilation of notes on the Latin language, law, philosophy, history, antiquarianism and other subjects. Gellius claimed that he assembled his commentarii from the initial notes or annotationes he made from books that he read or statements that he heard that he wanted to remember:

"I used to jot down [annotabam] whatever took my fancy, of any and every kind, without any definite order or plan; and such notes I could lay away as an aid to the memory, like a kind of literary storehouse" (quoted by Blair, Too Much to Know. Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age [2010] 82).

Attic Nights is divided into twenty books, of which all have survived in some form except book eight, for which we have only the index.  The work is devoid of any formal sequence or standard arrangement, which, in itself is a kind of arrangement. Though Gellius was not considered a major author in antiquity his work was exploited by pagan and Christian authors. 

The oldest surviving manuscript of Noctes Atticae is one of the oldest parchment codices surviving from antiquity. It is a fourth century palimpsest (manuscript A of the text) in rustic capitals preserved in the Vatican Library (Vat. Pal. lat. 24).  In Codices Latini Antiquiores I (1934) no. 74 E. A. Lowe described it as follows:

"Palimpsest, primary script (for the upper script, Vetus Testamentum in uncial aec. VII-VIII, see No. 68a). Forty-four leaves survive, each folded in two and now foliated: 72, 79, 80, 82-85, 87-99, 102-121, 129-176. The leaves now unbound and kept between cardboard. Size (when opened out) 195 x 150 mm. (105 x 105 mm.) in 2 columns of 13 lines averaging 10 letters to the line. Ruling on the hair-side, which is outside, apparently after folding; single bounding lines enclose each column. Prickings to guide ruling sometimes intercolumnar but more often, apparently, on the outer bounding line. Gatherings of ten; one survives complete, and a second lacks one bifolium only. In each quire the first and the last page are left blank—an extraordinary practice found also in Vatic. Regin. La. 2077 (Cicero, Verrines; see No. 115) but the last page has the quire-mark q followed by a Roman numeral in large sloping cursive placed in the centre of the upper half of the page. Abbreviations: B·, Q· =bus, que: R'=rum at line-ends; P.R. = populus Romanus. Omitted N at line-ends marked by a simple stroke after the vowel. Script is Rustic capital of a striking type, written probably with a reed, and showing marked contrast between fine and thick strokes—an example of extreme technical ability: B, F, L often rise above the other letters; F, G and last stroke of U descend below the base line; Y has a peculiar shape- a straight stem supporting a slant s-like top. Blank spaces carefully calculated were left for the Greek texts cited but were never filled.

"Origin uncertain. A scribe's signature on foll. 173v-172, the first page of a quire, seems to read: COTT.A..SCRIPSIT. The Gellius was erased for rewriting ca. saec. VII-VIII. The MS. was probably at Lorsch during the eighth century. Later it was at Heidelberg, whence it was removed to the Vatican in 1623."

By the end of Antiquity the text of Gellius disappeared; it was unknown to authorities such as Isidore of Seville and the Venerable Bede. "At this time must have come the split in the transmission, whereby Books 1-7 circulated separately from 9-20- a time which also saw the loss of all of Book 8 (including the lemmata), the lemmata to Book 19 and many of those to 20, and the end of the work (20, 10.7-11.5)" (P.K. Marshall in Reynolds (ed) Texts and Transmission. A Survey of the Latin Classics [1983] 176-77 ff, outlining the transmission of the text through various families of manuscripts during the Middle Ages.) See also Holford-Strevens, "Aulus Gellius," Grafton, Mott, Settis (eds) The Classical Tradition (2010) 386-87.

Gellius's Noctes Atticae first appeared in print from the press of Sweynheym and Pannartz, In domo Petri de Maximis, in Rome on April 11, 1469. It was edited for the press by Giovanni Andrea Bussi, Bishop of Aleria. ISTC No.: ig00118000. Ten printed editions of the text appeared in the 15th century, all from Italian presses.

The Notitia Dignitatum is one of the few surviving manuscripts documenting the administrative organization of the eastern and western Roman empires, listing several thousand offices from the imperial court down to the provincial level. It is considered relatively up to date, with the expected problems and omissions, for the Western empire circa 420 CE, and for the Eastern empire circa 400 CE.

"Notitiae were lists or catalogues, also referred to as latercula. Such lists were typical of the systemization of that characterized the late Roman bureaucracy. The variety of extant notitiae. . . can be broken down into four categories: provincial lists, urban catalogues, episcopal lists, and the Notitia Dignitatum" (Bowersock et al [eds.] Late Antiquity. A Guide to the Postclassical World [1999] 612).

One of the most significant surviving early copies of this text was made for the bibliophile Pietro Donato, bishop of Padua, in January 1436, while Donato was presiding over the Council of Basel. In addition to the exchange of ideas, long meetings such as this Council were also places to which manuscripts and scribes could be brought for copying and exchange, and new works could be disseminated to readers who would take their copy back to their home region possibly for further distribution by copying at their local scriptorium.

Donato's manuscript, which also includes several other texts, including the geographical compilation, Liber de mensura orbis terrae, by the Irish monk Dicuil composed in 821, and the De rebus bellicis, was given the general title Cosmographia Scoti. According to a note in Donato's hand in the manuscript, the exemplar from which the manuscript was copied was a "vetustissimus codex" from the library of Speyer Cathedral. This late 9th or early 10th century manuscript, most of which no longer survives, is generally known as the Codex Spirensis. The manuscript is known to have existed in 1542, but was lost before 1672; only a single leaf of the Codex Spirensis survives today at Maihingen (HS. I,2,2°.37). It was used in the binding of a record book which dates from 1602-3. (Thompson 11).

Later in the fifteenth century Donato's copy of the Codex Spirensis came into the possession of A. Maffei at Rome, and passed into the collection of manuscripts assembled by the Venetian Jesuit Matheo Luigi Canonici. After Canonici's death his collection was purchased in 1817 by the Bodleian Library.

The miniature paintings in the Donato's copy of the Notitia Dignitatum were by Peronet Lamy, an illuminator who worked for Amadeus VIII of Savoy, later elected Pope by the Council, as Felix V. The manuscript is preserved at the Bodleian Library, and according to their exhibition catalogue from 1975, the same scribe and illuminator prepared another copy of the collection that is preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

"The Notitia Dignitatum is a unique document of the Roman imperial chanceries. One of the very few surviving documents of Roman government, it details the administrative organisation of the eastern and western empires, listing several thousand offices from the imperial court down to the provincial level. It is usually considered to be up to date for the Western empire in the 420s, and for the Eastern empire in 400s. However, no absolute date can be given, and there are omissions and problems" (Wikipedia article on Notitia Dignitatum, accessed 11-29-2008).

Hunt, R.W., The Survival of Ancient Literature, Oxford: Bodleian Library, 1975, no. 146.

Thompson, A Roman Reformer and Inventor. Being, a New Text of the Treatise De Rebus Bellicis with a Translation and Introduction (1952) discusses the history of the various early copies of the Codex Spirensis which preserved the text of the Notitia Dignitatum as well as De rebus bellicis, and other works.

From the early seventh century until roughly the year 1200 monastic scriptoria and other ecclesiastic establishments remained essentially the only customers for books, and they had a virtual monopoly on manuscript book production. Most codices were written on vellum or parchment, but as late as the eighth century some codices were written on papyrus.

Kaiyuan Za Bao, or Kaiyuan Chao Pao, Bulletin of the Court, an early newspaper, was published during the Kaiyuan era. It may also be considered "the world's first magazine."

Handwritten on silk, Bulletin of the Court collected political and domestic news, mainly for distribution to government officials.

The Suda, or Souda (Σοῦδα), a massive tenth century Byzantine encyclopedic dictionary of the Mediterranean world written in Greek, contains 30,000 entries, many drawn from ancient sources that were since lost. Little is known regarding its compilation except that it must have been compiled before the time of 12th century writer Eustathius of Thessalonica (Archbishop Eustathios of Thessalonike) who frequently quoted from it.  Its title probably comes from the Byzantine Greek word souda, meaning "fortress" or "stronghold," with the alternate name, Suidas, stemming from an error made by Eustathius, who mistook the title for the proper name of the author.

"The Suda is somewhere between a grammatical dictionary and an encyclopedia in the modern sense. It explains the source, derivation, and meaning of words according to the philology of its period, using such earlier authorities as Harpocration and Helladios. There is nothing especially important about this aspect of the work. It is the articles on literary history that are valuable. These entries supply details and quotations from authors whose works are otherwise lost. They use older scholia to the classics (Homer, Thucydides, Sophocles, etc.), and for later writers, Polybius, Josephus, the Chronicon Paschale, George Syncellus, George Hamartolus, and so on.

"This lexicon represents a convenient work of reference for persons who played a part in political, ecclesiastical, and literary history in the East down to the tenth century. The chief source for this is the encyclopedia of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (912-59), and for Roman history the excerpts of John of Antioch (seventh century). Krumbacher (Byzantinische Literatur, 566) counts two main sources of the work: Constantine VII for ancient history, and Hamartolus (Georgios Monachos) for the Byzantine age" (Wikipedia article on Suda, accessed 02-02-2010).

Toward the very end of the 15th century humanist Demetrios Chalkokondyles (Demetrius Chalcondylas) edited the encyclopedic text and had it published for the first time in print in Greek as Lexicon graecum. Chalcondylas's edition was issued by Johannes Bissolus and Benedictus Mangius of Milan on November 15, 1499. This work, consisting of 516 leaves in folio, was the largest single-volume work printed in Greek in the fifteenth century. It was necessarily an expensive book, and included on folio 1a dialogue of Stephanus Niger between a bookseller and a student, mentioning the price of three ducats. ISTC No. is00829000

♦ The most significant modern edition and the first edition in English, is Suda On Line: Byzantine Lexicography. This online collaboration began in 1998, predating the Wikipedia, which began in 2001.

"The purpose of the Suda On Line is to open up this stronghold of information by means of a freely accessible, keyword-searchable, XML-encoded database with translations, annotations, bibliography, and automatically generated links to a number of other important electronic resources. To date over 170 scholars have contributed to the project from eighteen countries and four continents. Of the 30,000-odd entries in the lexicon, over 25,000 have been translated as of this date, and more translations are submitted every day." 

The whole Buddhist canon, usually called the Tripitaka, was printed from wood blocks in Chengdu (Chengtu) China.

"This collection consisted of 5,048 volumes covering 130,000 pages. It therefore required the cutting of 130,000 blocks. This massive work, together with additions, was reprinted frequently during the Sung" (Carter, Invention of Printing in China 2nd ed [1955] 89).

Muhammad ib Ishaq (Abu al Faraj) called Ibn Abi al-Nadiim (Abi Ya'qub Ishaq al-Warraq al-Baghdadi), a bookseller, stationer and "court companion" of Baghdad, published Al- Fihrist, an annotated index of the books of all nations extant in the Arabic language and script.

The English translator of al-Nadim's work, Bayard Dodge, suggests that Al-Nadim, working in his father's bookshop, "wished to assemble a catalogue to show customers and to help in the procuring and copying of manuscripts to be sold to scholars and book collectors" (Dodge p. xxiii).  This was the earliest universal bibliography.

"It is reasonable to believe that when al-Nadim died the original copy of his manuscript was placed in the royal library at Baghdad, while other copies made by scribes about the time of his death were assigned to his family bookstore, where some of them were probably sold to customers who came to purchase interesting books. Farmer says: ' Yagut (d. 626/1299) averred that he used a copy of the Fihrist in the handwriting of al-Nadim himself. The lexicographer al-Saghani (650/1252) made a similar claim. Either of these autograph copies may have been in the Caliph's library, which was destroyed utterly in the sacking of Baghdad in 656/1258)' "(Dodge p. xxii).

This work did not appear in print until an edition of the Arabic text was issued by orientalist Gustav Flügel in Leipzig, 1871-72.

The text was first edited from the earliest manuscripts and translated into English by Bayard Dodge as The Fihrist of al-Nadim. A Tenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture, 2 vols., New York, 1970. For the translation of part one Dodge used MS 3315 in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin:

"We know nothing about the history of the manuscript until it was placed in the library of the great mosque at 'Akka, when the notorious Ahmad Pasha-al-Jazzar was ruler there at the time of Napoleon Bonaparte. After the fall of Ahmad Pasha, the manuscript was evidently stolen from the mosque. It was probably at this time that it became divided, as the Beatty Manuscript includes on the first half of Al-Fihrist. In the course of time the dealer Yahudah sold his first half to Sir Chester Beatty, who placed it in his library at Dublin" (Dodge p. xxviii).

For the translation of part two Dodge used MS 1934 which "forms part of the Shahid 'Ali Pasha collection which is now cared for in the library adjacent to the Sulaymaniyah (Süleymaniye) Mosque at Istanbul. In the library catalogue it is described as 'Suleymaniye G. Kutuphanesi kismi Shetit Ali Pasha 1934" (Dodge p. xxx).

Dodge indicated that he believed that each separate portion represents half of the same manuscript made shortly after the death of al-Nadim.

The earliest dated evidence of the pecia system of providing "certified texts" of manuscripts in university bookstores is the Vercelli contract of 1228. This coincided with the foundation of the university at Vercelli, which was "the world's first university funded by public money": 

" 'Item habebit commune Vercellarum duos exemplatores, quibus taliter providebit quod eos scolare habere possint, qui habeant exemplantia [exemplaris?] in utroque iure et in Theologia compretentia et correctam tam in text quam in gloxa, ita quod solutio fiat a scolaribus pro exemplis secundum quod convenit ad taxationem Rectorum' ('Item, the commune of Vercelli will provide two exemplatores who are to have exemplaria in both laws and in theology, complete and correct both in text and gloss, so that the scholars may pay for their copies at a price set by the rectors'). This contract was signed on 4 April 1228 between certain masters of the University of Padua who wished to secede from that university and representatives of the commune of Vercelli, who were ready to bid generously in privileges to attract a new university to their city. The University of Padua was then only six years old and it is not credible that in such a short space of time the pecia could have been created there. The University of Padua was formed in 1222 by a secession from the University of Bologna, and it seems to be plain that it was in that older university that the pecia system had its origin about the year 1200.

"The spread of the system

"The pecia system existed in at least eleven universities: at Bologna [founded 1088], Padua [founded 1222], Vercelli, Perugia (founded in 1308), Treviso (1318) and Florence (1349) in Northern Italy: at Salamanca [founded 1134] in Spain (1254) and Naples in Southern Italy (1224); at Paris [founded 1257] and Toulouse [founded 1229] in France; and at Oxford. No trace of it has been found at Salerno, Montpellier, Orléans, Angers, Avignon or Cambridge, or in any of the German or Dutch universities. Actual exemplaria and pecia copies were identified by Destrez from Bologna, Paris, Oxford and Naples, but none from the other seven universities have yet been recognised; and we only know that they provided for the pecia system in their statutes" (Pollard, "The pecia system in the medieval universities," Parkes & Watson (eds) Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts & Libraries. Essays presented to N.R. Ker [1978] 147-48).

"Generally speaking, the purpose of the system was to provide reliable copies of the works of contemporary scholastic authors in law, theology, philosophy and pastoral aids, and it worked somewhat as follows. A university bookseller (stationarius) would obtain an autograph copy of an author's work, or, if that were hard to read (or if the author were long dead), a fair copy or other reliable exemplar of the work. From this exemplar the stationer made a copy or exemplar of his own on equal quires or pieces (peciae), each one of which was numbered in sequence, so that the stationer, when requested for copies of the text in question, could hire out these pieces in turn for copying to professional writers. . . ." (L. E. Boyle, Peciae, Apopeciae, and a Toronto MS. of the Sententia Libri Ethicorum of Aquinas, in Ganz (ed.) The Role of the Book in Medieval Culture [1986] 71).

The standard and extensively illustrated monograph on the pecia system remains Destrez, La pecia dans les manuscrits universitaires du XIIIe et du XIVe siècle (1935).

French scholar and poet, Guillaume de Lorris wrote the first section (4058 lines) of Le Roman de la Rose (Romance of the Rose), a book-length poem in Old French, in which the narrator enters a dream world and falls in love with a Rose—an allegorical representation of a young woman. During his pursuit he instructs readers on the art of courtly love, with frequent bawdy comments and detours into alchemy and astronomy. 

Le Roman de la Rose became one of the best-sellers of the Middle Ages, of which at least 270 medieval manuscripts survive— many illuminated— from the 13th to 16th centuries. The earliest, dating close after the completion of the work, is in the Bibliothèque national de France (BnF fr. 1573).

The Roman de la Rose Digital Library, a joint project of the Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University and the Bibliothèque nationale, intends to make virtual copies of at least 150 of the extant manuscripts of this work available with page turner software.

de Lorris' ". . . part of the story is set in a walled garden or locus amoenus, one of the traditional topoi of epic and chivalric literature. In this walled garden, the interior represents romance, while the exterior stands for everyday life. It is unclear whether Lorris considered his version to be incomplete, but it was generally viewed as such.

"Around 1275, Jean de Meun composed an additional 17,724 lines. Jean's discussion of love is considered more philosophical and encyclopedic, but also more misogynistic and bawdy. The writer Denis de Rougemont felt that the first part of the poem portrayed Rose as an idealised figure, while the second part portrayed her as a more physical and sensual being " (Wikipedia article on Roman de la Rose, accessed 12-30-2008).

"The date of this second part is generally fixed between 1268 and 1285 by a reference in the poem to the death of Manfred and Conradin, executed in 1268 by order of Charles of Anjou (d. 1285) who is described as the present king of Sicily. M. F. Guillon (Jean Clopinel, 1903), however, considering the poem primarily as a political satire, places it in the last five years of the 13th century. Jean de Meun doubtless edited the work of his predecessor, Guillaume de Lorris, before using it as the starting-point of his own vast poem, running to 19,000 lines. The continuation of Jean de Meun is a satire on the monastic orders, on celibacy, on the nobility, the papal see, the excessive pretensions of royalty, and especially on women and marriage. Guillaume had been the servant of love, and the exponent of the laws of "courtoisie"; Jean de Meun added an "art of love," exposing with brutality the vices of women, their arts of deception, and the means by which men may outwit them. Jean de Meun embodied the mocking, sceptical spirit of the fabliaux. He did not share in current superstitions, he had no respect for established institutions, and he scorned the conventions of feudalism and romance. His poem shows in the highest degree, in spite of the looseness of its plan, the faculty of keen observation, of lucid reasoning and exposition, and it entitles him to be considered the greatest of French medieval poets. He handled the French language with an ease and precision unknown to his predecessors, and the length of his poem was no bar to its popularity in the 13th and 14th centuries. Part of its vogue was no doubt because the author, who had mastered practically all the scientific and literary knowledge of his contemporaries in France, had found room in his poem for a great amount of useful information and for numerous citations from classical authors" (Wikipedia article on Jean de Meun, accessed 12-29-2008).

"At least 270 manuscripts and manuscript fragments of the Roman de la Rose survive from the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. These works are kept mainly in European libraries, and most remain in France where the majority of these books were produced. Thirty Rose manuscripts are now in different repositories in the US, including the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (Walters 143), the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (Ludwig XV7) and the Morgan Library & Museum in New York (Morgan 948).

"There are also several Rose manuscripts in private collections, two of which are part of the Rose Digital Library (Cox Macro Rose and Ferrell Rose); two are now owned by Senshu University in Japan (Senshu 2 and Senshu 3) and can also be found on this site. One of the oldest surviving Rose texts is a manuscript now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (BnF fr. 1573), made in the late 13th century, not long after Jean de Meun finished his section of the poem. Two early illustrated texts of the Rose are Paris, BnF, fr. 378 and Paris, BnF, fr. 1559. Both of these date from the late 13th century as well. The last illustrated Roman de la Rose manuscript is the Morgan Rose. With 107 miniatures, this late work was produced c. 1520, after the first printed editions of the Rose text had already come out, around the turn of the 16th century (Rosenwald 396 and Rosenwald 917).

"Many Rose manuscripts are illustrated, some with large cycles of miniatures, and lavishly painted with gold and colored pigments. Others are unillustrated and represent a less costly undertaking. In a number of these manuscripts spaces were left for illustrations that were never begun, possibly because the bookmakers ran out of time, or because the patron ran out of money" (Keefe, Manuscripts of the Rose Digital Library, accessed 12-30-2008).

The well-known novel and film by Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (1980), alludes to the literary tradition of Le Roman de la Rose.

While in prison in Genoa from 1298 to 1299 Marco Polo supposedly dictated a book to a romance writer, Rustichello da Pisa. His work, which was very frequently copied, was a rare popular success in the period before printing. 

"The impact of Polo's book on cartography was delayed: the first map in which some names mentioned by Polo appear was in the Catalan Atlas of Charles V (1375), which included thirty names in China and a number of other Asian toponyms. In the mid-fifteenth century the cartographer of Murano, Fra Mauro, meticulously included all of Polo's toponyms in his map of the world. Marco Polo's description of the Far East and its riches inspired Christopher Columbus's decision to try to reach Asia by sea, in a westward route. A heavily annotated copy of Polo's book was among the belongings of Columbus. Polo's writings included descriptions of cannibals and spice growers" (Wikipedia article on The Travels of Marco Polo, accessed 04-04-2010).

"His book, Il Milione (the title comes from either 'The Million', then considered a gigantic number, or from Polo's family nickname Emilione), was written in the Old French and entitled Le divisament dou monde ('The description of the world'). The book was soon translated into many European languages and is known in English as The Travels of Marco Polo. The original is lost, and we have several often-conflicting versions of the translations. The book became an instant success — quite an achievement in a time when printing was not known in Europe."

"An authoritative version of Marco Polo's book does not exist, and the early manuscripts differ significantly. The published versions of his book either rely on single scripts, blend multiple versions together or add notes to clarify, for example in the English translation by Henry Yule. Another English translation by A.C. Moule and Paul Pelliot, published in 1938, is based on the Latin manuscript which was found in the library of the Cathedral of Toledo in 1932, and is 50% longer than other versions. Approximately 150 variants in various languages are known to exist, and without the availability of a printing press many errors were made during copying and translation, resulting in many discrepancies" (Wikipedia article on Marco Polo, accessed 01-29-2010).

Marco Polo's work was first published in print in a German translation issued by printer Friedrich Creussner of Nuremberg in 1475 under the title of Hie hebt sich an das puch des edeln Ritters vnd landtfarers Marcho Polo, in dem er schreibt die grossen wunderlichen ding dieser welt Übers. aus dem Ital ISTC No.: ip00901000. A Latin edition followed in 1483-84. Two editions in Italian appeared in 1496 and 1500. In December 2012 a digital facsimile of the first German edition was available from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek at this link. The title page consists of a full-page woodcut surrounded by the verbose title.

♦ From the standpoint of printing before its invention in the West, Polo's work contained the earliest detailed account of Chinese printed paper money that was widely available in Europe. It was through Polo's account, and possibly by seeing actual examples of Chinese paper money, that Europeans may have first learned about printing. Carter, Invention of Printing in China 2nd ed (1955) 109-11.

In spite of its wide fame, recent scholars question whether Marco Polo actually went to China.

Between 1304 and 1309 Bolognese jurist Pietro Crescenzi (Petrus de Crescentius, Petrus de Crescentiis) wrote Ruralia commoda. Derived in part from the writings of Romans Columella, Cato the Elder, and Varro, this was one of the most widely read medieval works on agriculture, animal husbandry, and horticulture, and it continued to be widely read throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, resulting in numerous printed editions, many illustrated. The text was divided into twelve sections:

1. The best location and arrangement of a manor, villa or farm

2. The botanical background needed to raise different crops

3.  Building a granary and cultivation of cereal, forage and food

4. On vines and wine-making

5 & 6.  Arboriculture and horticulture, including 185 plants useful for medicine and nourishment

7.  Meadows and woods

8.  Gardens

9.  Animal husbandry and bee-keeping

10. Hawking and hunting

11. General summary of the book

12. Calendar of duties and tasks, month by month

Ruralia commoda was first printed in an unillustrated edition in Augsburg by Johann Schüssler in 1471. ISTC no. ic00965000. Thirteen editions were printed in the 15th century: six in Latin, three in Italian and two each in French and German. Various were illustrated with woodcuts.

In 1307 Persian physician of Jewish origin, polymathic writer and historian from Hamadan, Rashīd al-Dīn Tabīb (Persian: رشیدالدین طبیب) also Rashīd al-Dīn Fadhl-allāh Hamadānī (Persian: رشیدالدین فضل‌الله همدانی), a convert to Islam, wrote in the Persian language an enormous history entitled Jami al-Tawarikh.  

"It was in three volumes with a total of approximately 400 pages, with versions in Persian, Arabic and Mongol. The work describes cultures and major events in world history from China to Europe; in addition, it covers Mongol history, as a way of establishing their cultural legacy. The lavish illustrations and calligraphy required the efforts of hundreds of scribes and artists, with the intent that two new copies (one in Persian, and one in Arabic) would be created each year and distributed to schools and cities around the Ilkhanate, in the Middle East, Central Asia, Asia Minor, and the Indian sub-continent. Approximately 20 illustrated copies were made of the work during Rashid al-Din's lifetime, but only a few portions remain, and the complete text has not survived. The oldest known copy is an Arabic version, of which half has been lost, but one set of pages is currently in the Khalili Collection, comprising 59 folios from the second volume of the work. Another set of pages, with 151 folios from the same volume, is owned by the Edinburgh University Library. Two Persian copies from the first generation of manuscripts survive in the Topkapi Palace Library in Istanbul. The early illustrated manuscripts together represent 'one of the most important surviving examples of Ilkhanid art in any medium' and are the largest surviving body of early examples of the Persian miniature"( Wikipedia article on Jami al-Tawarikh, accessed 01-25-2012).

This history contained a discussion of printing in China.

"This is the earliest notice of Chinese printing, aside from the making of paper money, outside of East Asiatic sources. It is evident that Rashid had a reasonably reliable source of information and that the printing in which he was interested was the printing of books, especially historical records. Where he failed was in not grasping the importance of the new art as an economical means of disseminating literature and in seeing it merely as a means of authenticating the exact text—a characteristic of Chinese official printing that has already been noticed . . . ." (Carter, Invention of Printing in China 2nd ed[1955] 173).

In 1980, an illuminated version of Rashīd al-Dīn's manuscript in Arabic was sold at Sotheby's to Nasser David Khalili of London for £850,000, then the highest price ever paid for an Arabic manuscript.

"The recognition that they were not Romans, that the Roman past was essentially other, differentiated Renaissance writers from their medieval counterparts. Lovato Lovati's colleague Albertino Mussato (1262-1329) could compose a tragedy in Senecan metre for an ancient purpose, to rouse the citizens of Padua to civic action. Petrarch (1304-74) could compose letters to Cicero in Ciceronian style, though Boccaccio (1313-76) still mingled quotations from ancient and medieval authors without recognizing that they were inherently different. The recognition that Rome was a culture basically distinct from their own was largely the work of humanists and they, as Martines has shown, were trained first and foremost in law. A legal training involved competence in the arts of discourse—in the writing of letters. One letter from Florentine chancellor Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) was said by a contemporary to be worth 5,000 soldiers. The models of style to which they turned were ancient letters: Seneca's, the Younger Pliny's, Symachus', and (after Petrarch had rediscovered them) Cicero's to Atticus and to others of his friends. Teachers of discourse like Guarino of Verona (1374-1460) were the umanisti or humanists in whose hands lay the revival of Antiquity. The Roman past was recognized as something removed in time, definably different, and of interest as an ideal, which one might escape into as did Petrarch or which one might use as a goad to challenge the indolent present; thereupon it became something to be sought. The hunt was on for manuscripts of Roman authors collecting dust in ecclesiastical libraries. Humanists served as diplomats, and their search for and discoveries of the texts of Roman authors took place in stolen moments in the course of their diplomatic missions to European courts ecclesiastical and secular. Hence Petrarch assembled his text of Livy in Avignon, where his patron Landolfo Colonna attended the papal court; hence Poggio (1380-1459) tired of the business of the Council of Constance (1414-17), explored the book cupboards of St-Gall. Nicholas of Cues  [Nicholas of Cusa] (1401-64) very naturally visited the libraries of Egmont and St. Maximin in Trier, along with scores of others equally interesting, in his capacity as papal legate to Germany. Not unlike their forerunners Lupos of Ferrieres, Wibald of Corvey, Philip of Bayeux, Richard de Fournival, diplomats of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries searched the libraries of abbeys and cathedrals for ancient authors. While libraries were the sources for texts, the agencies by which texts were disseminated were especially two: (1) the international meeting places, such as the seats of ecclesiastical authority, the papal court at Avignon (1309-77), the great Councils of Constance (1414-18) and Basel (1431-49) and Rome itself—crossroads where diplomats from the South met those from the North; and (2) the humanist-diplomats themselves through their networks of like-minded friends and correspondents. Even without external evidence one can see, for example that Petrarch was single-handedly responsble for the introduction to fourteenth-century Italian humanists of a whole series of ancient texts; these are texts for which the parent of an entire branch of the manuscript tradition obviously once belonged to him, since the derivative manuscripts belonged in large part to his friends and their friends" (Rouse, "The Transmission of the Texts," Jenkyns [ed] The Legacy of Rome: A New Appraisal [1992] 50-51).

The scribe Diebold Lauber of Haguenau, Germany, who produced illuminated manuscripts of vernacular paraphrases of biblical history called "History Bibles", is thought to have employed an early form of organized "mass production" in the production of manuscripts—a kind of precursor of the "mass production" of books introduced by printing.  Around seventy examples of illuminated manuscripts produced by Lauber's shop have been identified.

"The wide assortment of products which he advertised suggests that Lauber may have kept a stock of his books. Lauber's workshop is often viewed as a precursor of a printing house, because rationalised methods of production were employed in order to reduce the costs of labour. . . . the quires are composed of individual leaves, and the text is written in siple gothic cursive letters. The text is structed by means of indices, titles and chapter headings.

"Also, the simply coloured pen illustrations drawn directly on the paper, in the most cases without a border or background, reveal a tendency towards serial production. With a limited range of artistic means, a small number of icongraphic types were used for various genres of texts. The illustrations most characteristic for Lauber's workshop were created by the painters of the so-called 'Malergruppe A', a group of artists active between 1425 and 1450. . . ." (Wagner, Als die Lettern laufen lerneten. Medienvwandel im 15. Jahrhundert [2009] No. 1).

"In the decade before the invention of typographic printing, and then  concurrently with the earliest years of European typography, the production of handwritten books increased considerably. One cause that has been proposed for this increase is the influen ce of German monastic reform movements, such as in Austria and south Germany, the Melk Congregation. However real and significant, this reason can provide only a local and partial explanation. The increase in bookmaking also occurred in other regions of Europe, notably Italy. The expansion of Europe's papermaking trade in the later fourteenth century and the first half of the fifteenth lowered the material cost of books for those who were happy to have them written on paper rather than parchment. Yet there remains some hiastus in the link between evidence and explanation.

"Whether we are to think of it as a cause or an effect, one feature of this increase has already been briefly mentioned: the growing number of less formal, 'self-written' books, of which the writer was also the intended reader. This broad phenomenon is examplifed in small by the Latin-German dictionary known as Vocabularius Ex quo, of which about 250 fifteenth-century manuscript copies have been listed, as well as nearly four dozen fifteenth-century typographic editions. A considerable number of the manuscripts, when complete, contain colophons whose writers record that at the time they were students in Basel, Kaufbeuren, Memmingen, Pforzheim, Stendal, Ulm, and so on. We may reasonably imagine that one of the commons tasks of a German school student at a certain level was to transcribe for personal use a copy of Vocabularius Ex quo.

"Our best evidence for an increase in book making in this period comes from explicitly dated manuscripts, which is to say manuscripts whose scribes, for whatever varying reasons among a multiplicity of possibilities, felt the urge on finishing their tasks (or occasionally, on beginning them (to set down the date of the work. Because of the progress in recent decades of the Catalogue of Dated Manuscripts project of the Comité international de paléographie latine, we now possess a significant corpus of explicitly dated manuscripts of the fifteenth century, written in many different regions of Europe. From a global total of about 10,400 dated manuscripts of the fifteenth century, the totals for the successive five-year intervals bracketing and including this second period of fifteenth-century print-and bookmaking are as follows:

1426-30: 361

1431-35: 448

1436-40: 583

1441-45: 589

1446-50: 688

1451-55: 822

1456-60: 949

1461-65: 1001

1466-70: 1035

1471-75: 800

1476-80: 531

1481-85: 389

1486-90: 309

"Insofar as dated manuscripts are representative of fifteenth-century manuscripts overall, it thus appears that the two decades 1451-1470 mark a peak, with production almost two-thirds greater than that of the preceding interval, 1431-1450. In the next half-decade, 1471-75, there is a noticeable decline, and in the half decade after that the decline is very marked, the dated total for 1476-80 being less than that of 1436-1440.

"The striking decline in written book production in the 1470s correlates almost exactly with the strong increase in printed book production. A significant expansion of typographic printing occurred in the yers 1469-1471, manifested both by the expansion of places of production—starting in 1469 with the introduction of typography to two cities that became dominant: Nuremberg, and even more preemeinently, Venice—and by the increasing pace of production. To judge from physical survivals, both of integral copies and of binding-waste fragments, the surviving output of European printing shops from the early 1450s through 1469 is in the neighborhood of 325-350 editions. In 1470 to 1471, more than 400 new editions were sent to market, and in 1472 and 1473, nearly 800 more editions appeared. The rate of production 1474 and 1475 increased even further. In the crossing lines of book production in the 1470s—the handwritten variety on a descending curve, the typographic variety on an ascending—we have stronger than ordinary evidence for historical cause and effect. As the supply of printed copies of the most-used texts of literate Europe increased—copies for the most part of clear and strongly inked lettering and cheaper than commissioned scribal work—the need to create handwritten copies declined" (Paul Needham, "Prints in the Early Printing Shops," IN: Parshall (ed) The Woodcut in Fifteenth-Century Europe (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2009) 41-42).

In 1448 French Jewish philosopher and controversialist of Arles and perhaps Avignon Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus published Meïr Netib, a concordance to the Hebrew Bible on which he worked from 1437 to 1447, with a philosophico-exegetical introduction, Petiḥat Meïr Netib.

"The Meïr Netib was the first Bible concordance in Hebrew, and was distinguished from the similar Latin work of Arlotus of Prato in that its vocabulary was arranged in the order of the roots. In the introduction the author says that his work aimed to facilitate the study of Biblical exegesis and to prevent Jewish converts to Christianity from making, in their religious controversies, incorrect quotations from the Bible, as was often the case with Geronimo de Santa Fé. The 'Meïr Netib,' with its complete introduction, was first published at Venice (erroneously under the name of Mordecai Nathan) in 1523; in 1556 it was published at Basel by Buxtorf, but with only a part of the introduction" (Wikipedia article on Issac Nathan ben Kalonymus, accessed 05-09-2012).

Printed newsletters begin circulating in Europe.

In 1452 Italian priest, humanist, rhetorician and orator Lorenzo Valla finished the first complete Latin translation of Thucydides (Θουκυδίδης, Thoukydídēs) History of the Peloponnesian War. Valla's translation was commissioned by humanist Pope Nicholas V as part of the pope's project– never completed for obvious reasons– to have all Greek literature translated into Latin. Valla began the translation in the spring of 1448, and the difficult task occupied him for two years. The manuscript of the final text, written by the scribe Johannes Lamperti de Rodenberg, with numerous corrections and explanatory notes in Valla's hand, is preserved in the Vatican Library (Vat. lat. 1801). An image of this is published in Grafton, "The Vatican and Its Library," Grafton (ed) Rome Reborn. The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture (1993) 35. Specifically Valla sanctioned this manuscript as the archetypus, from which he expected the text to be diffused through copying.

In his dedication of the manuscript to the pope Valla compared "Pope Nicholas V to a Roman emperor who, while he himself remained in Rome, bade his generals conquer foreign lands and add them to the Empire, i.e., translate their literature into Latin. . . . Valla's province, Thucydides, had proved especially arduous. Valla also mentioned in the dedication that it was Bessarion who suggested to the pope that he commission the Latin Thucydides from Valla" (Pade, "Thucydides," Brown, Hankins, Kaster [eds] Catalogus translationum et commentariorum VIII [2003] 120).

Valla's translation was widely copied, and in the process corrupted. When Valla's text of Thucydides was first printed, probably in Treviso by Joannes Rubeus Vercellensis in 1483, the editor, Bartholomaeus Parthenius, stated that the copy or copies of Valla's translation to which he had access were so corrupt that he had to refer to a Greek manuscript to determine the correct text. Nevertheless Parthenius's printed text was also widely criticized by later scholars. (ISTC no. it00359000).

The Greek text or texts from which Valla worked do not seem to have been identified. During the Middle Ages in Europe, in which there was limited knowledge of Greek and Greek texts generally, Thucydides was known in the West only through mentions in the Latin writings of ancient Rome. The eariest surviving translation of Thucydides is a translation into Aragonese of thirty-eight speeches from the Historiae made at the request of Juan Fernández de Heredia, Grand Master of Rhodes, who also commissioned Aragonese translations of other classical works. Pade (p. 111) believed that this translation was done from "an intermediary version in demotic Greek compiled for Heredia by the Greek scholar Dimitri Calodiqui between 1384 and 1396."

The earliest surviving Greek text of Thucydides may be the tenth century codex preserved in Florence at the Laurentian Library, Plut. 1xix.

An edition of the Ars minor by the fourth-century Roman grammarian Aelius Donatus was printed in Mainz in the type of the 36-line Bible (sometimes also called the DK-type). The year of printing is uncertain.

A fragment containing leaves 6/9, preserved in ULB Darmstadt, and catalogued by the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue as ISTC No.: id00314700, might be the earliest of the circa 435 different printings of the small grammar book printed in the fifteenth century. Nearly all copies of all editions of this work survived only in fragments, indicating that copies were mainly read out of existence. One other fragment preserved in Berlin is also estimated to have been printed in 1454: ISTC No.: id00314850.

Because so many of the surviving copies of Donatus are fragments we may deduce that there may have been further fifteenth century printings, of which no copies survived.

Fuessel, Gutenberg and the Impact of Printing. Translated from the German by Douglas Martin (2003) 30.

Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, a scribe who adopted the new technology of printing, published the Psalterium latinum (Mainzer Psalter) at Mainz. The work is cited in the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue ip01036000 as Psalterium. With canticles, hymns, capitula, preces maiores and minores. There are two issues: "a) of 143 leaves b) of 175 leaves, the latter designed for use in the diocese of Mainz."
All known copies are printed on vellum.

This magnificent book was:

• The first printed book to include a colophon giving both the name of the printer and the date of printing.

• The first work to incorporate color printing, with initial letters printed in red, light purple, and blue (from an engraved compound metal plate).

• The first printed book to include music— two lines of music printed with a 4-line staff.

The colophon of the Mainz Psalter boasted of the new technology involved in its production. The colophon reads in translation:

“The present copy of the Psalms, adorned with beauty of capital letters, and sufficiently marked out with rubrics, has been thus fashioned by an ingenious invention of printing and stamping without any driving of the pen. . . .”

The color printing in the Mainz Psalter was accomplished by means of compound printing. In this process the metal type for the initial letters was made in two interlocking sections. These could be taken apart for separate inking with the colors, and then reassembled for printing in a single passage through the press. Compound printing required great skill in metal working, and the inking and printing process was unusually laborious.  After using the process once again for their second Psalter of 1459 Fust and Schöffer reverted to conventional printing. According to Gascoigne, the compound printing process was not revived until it was applied in England to prevent forgery in bank notes in the nineteenth century.

Ten copies of the first Mainz Psalter survived, and according to the ISTC, nearly all surviving copies are either incomplete or fragmentary.

The only complete copy of the 175 leaf version is preserved in the Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. That copy is also the only one to include on its colophon leaf the first printer's mark: the two linked shields of Fust and Schöffer hanging from a branch, the first of which was inscribed with the Greek letter χ for Christ, the second inscribed with the Greek letter Λ (for logos = word).  None of the other extant copies of the 1457 psalter include this mark, and it is unclear whether it was originally published with only some of the edition, or might have been added to the colophon leaf of unsold sheets at some later date, after much of the edition had been distributed. (My thanks for Paul Needham for clarifying the problem of the printer's mark in the first Mainz Psalter.)

Gascoigne, Milestones in Colour Printing 1457-1859 (1997) 1.

Printers Fust and Schöffer completed their edition of Rationale divinorum officiorum by Guillelmus Duranti (Durandus)— a work explaining the meaning of the various services of the Catholic church and the ceremonies used in them. The folio volume has one large (thirteen-line) capital letter, and two smaller capitals printed in two colors— red and dull blue-gray, and a number of small capitals mostly printed in red, though some were omitted by the printer and put in by hand. All surviving copies are printed on vellum except for one on paper preserved at Munich.

The 1459 Durandus was the first book printed in type based on rounded script— less formal than the Gothic Textura or Textualis bookhand, on which Gutenberg and Schöffer based their first types.

"The type cut by Peter Schoeffer on the model of this hand is rounder and more open that Textura, the ascenders are more pronounced and give more white on the page, 'there is a greater differentiation of letters and therefore inscribed legibility'. The letter 'shares some characteristics of the Renaissance and others of the Middle Ages. Hence it has been called the Fere-humanistica or Gotico-antiqua. . . .The hand is gothic but with considerable roman tendencies' (A.F. Johnson Type Designs, 1959.) It was a letter much copied in Germany; less so outside. It was taken as a pattern by William Morris for his Troy and Chaucer types" (Berry & Poole, Annals of Printing [1966] 14).

ISTC  No.: id00403000.

Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer issued De officiis with Paradox Stoicorum. Hexasticha XII Sapientum de titulo Ciceronis. Horatius Flaccus: Ad T. Manlium Torquatum (Car. IV 7) from Mainz. ISTC No.:  ic00575000.

This edition, and coincidentally two other editions of texts by Cicero also printed in 1465, were the first editions of classical texts iisued through the medium of printing.

Printer Ulrich Zell issued Cicero's De officiis from Cologne.

Zell learned printing in Mainz at the shop of Fust and Schöffer, and is thought to have begun printing in Cologne as early as 1463. However, a number of his books are undated, as is this.  If it was issued in 1465 it is one of the three earliest printed editions of a classical text, all of which appeared in 1465. Coincidentally, one of the other two was an edition of the same title issued by Fust and Schöffer under the date of 1465. The other was an edition of Cicero's De oratore issued at the Abbey of Subiaco, Italy by Sweynheim and Pannartz in September, 1465.

ISTC No.: ic00575500

Johann Mentelin of Strasbourg issues the first edition of the Bible in German—the first edition in any modern language. ISTC no. ib00624000.

♦ You can view a digital facsimile of this book at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München website at this link: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0003/bsb00036981/images/index.html?id=00036981&fip=67.164.64.97&no=3&seite=5, accessed 12-29-2009).

Before July 20 of this year Adolf Rusch, the "R" printer, of Strasbourg issued the first printed edition of De sermonum proprietate, seu de universo, written by Hrabanus Maurus (Rabanus Maurus), Archbishop of Mainz in the first half of the ninth century. This was the first printed encyclopedia, and the first printed book to contain a chapter on medicine. That section may also be the first significant printed text on a scientific subject.

ISTC no. ir00001000:

"Dating is based on a MS. note in a copy at Paris BN (cf. CIBN). P. Needham in Christie's, Doheny 16, disputes the date, placing the types 1473-75 and regarding Mentelin in association with Rusch as responsible for the work of the R-printer."

Printers Sweynheym and Pannartz issued the first edition of St. Augustine, De civitate dei from their press at the monastery of Subiaco, Italy. It is thought that the monks at the monastery participated in printing the edition. 

The manuscript on which they based this printed edition remains preserved in the Monastery of St. Scholastica:

"That the codex was used for the printing is clearly shown by the frequent editorial corrections, the inky fingerprints, and the scored marks in the margins to indicate the end of the text page. The texts of the printed pages correspond almost exactly to these markings" (Wilson, The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle [1976] 34).

This may be the earliest printed book for which the printer's manuscript remains extant. ISTC no. ia01230000.

Printers Sweynheym and Pannartz issued an edition of the Opera of Virgil at Rome (ISTC no. iv00149000); printer Johannes Mentelin issued another edition at Strassburg (ISTC no. iv00151000).

These were the first printed editions of Virgil, and the ISTC estimates that the Mentelin edition appeared the year after the Sweynheym and Pannartz edition.

One of the most widely copied and read authors during the Middle Ages, Virgil was also one of the most frequently printed authors in the 15th century, with about 100 editions issued.

In 1470 typefounder, typographer, printer and publisher Nicolas Jenson printed in Venice an edition of Eusebius Caesariensis, De evangelica praeparatione, translated by Georgius Trapezuntius (Georgios Trapezuntios), with additions by Antonio Cornazzano.

This was the first book in which Jenson used the Roman typeface he designed. Jenson's Roman type was

"the first to be designed in accordance with typographical criteria, free of the conventions of written models. Jenson sought to create ideal individual letters, which by means of subtleties of fit and alignment would combine harmoniously on a page. He largely succeeded, and his books live to the claim made from them in an advertisement put out by Jenson's partners in about 1482: that they 'do not hinder one's eyes, but rather help them and do them good' " (Berry & Poole, Annals of Printing [1966] 21).

ISTC no. ie00118000.

Italian humanist and grammarian Niccolò Perotti, Archibishop of Siponto, incensed by the number of errors in Giovanni Andrea Bussi's edition of Pliny's Historia naturalis issued in Rome by Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, wrote to the Pope asking him to set up a board of learned correctors, such as himself, who would scrutinize, every text before it could be printed. Perotti's self-serving effort has been described as the first call for press censorship.

"The power of the press to impose a measure of uniformity was felt from the beginning to be doubled-edged. The hasty correction which a hard-pressed editor such as Giovanni Andrea Bussi was obliged to carry out, very often on the first manuscript that came to hand, permitted corrupt texts to be put into wide circulation. Even worse, an already corrupt text could become the vehicle of willful emendation on the part of the editor. It was precisely this that provoked another papal curialist, Niccolò Perotti, Archbishop of Spiponto, to attack Bussi's editing as early as 1471 and to call for centralized overseeing of texts issued at Rome. He says that he had thought the advent of printing was an inestimable boon to mankind until he set eyes on Bussi's 1470 edition of Pliny and realized the men of slight learning were now in a position to publish whatever they liked in hundreds of copies, without any sort of editorial responsibility or control. He proposes as a remedy that the pope should appoint a competent scholar (he thinks of himself) to supervise texts printed at Rome.

"Perotti himself, when Bussi ceased working for Sweynheym and Pannartz to be come the papal librarian, got the chance to turn his hand to preparing editions for the same firm in 1473: his own work found no kindlier reception with a number of fellow humanists than Bussi's had with him. His utopian scheme for control of the press came to nothing, but it did point to a troublesome aspect of the new invention" (Davies, "Humanism in Script and Print," Kraye (ed) The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism [1996] 57).

ISTC no. ip00787000 for the Sweynheym and Pannartz 1470 edition of Pliny.

Cardinal and Latin Patriarch of Constantinople Basilios Bessarion published Epistolae et orationes, edited by Guillaume Fichet, along with Bessarion's translation of Demosthenes: Olynthiaca prima in Paris by Ulrich Gering, Martin Crantz and Michael Friburger at their press at the Sorbonne, the first printing press in France.  

Bessarion translated a speech by Demosthenes warning the Athenians that the invasion of Philip of Macdon would destroy Greek culture. In the epistles that accompanied the translation, Bassrion claimed that Italy was in danger of falling to the Turks, and that immediate aid was need to repel the threat.

The volume was printed at the Sorbonne, probably in the hope of attracting support from the French aristocracy.  Since the printer did not have any Greek type, the printer had the Greek passages added by hand.

"Five copies are known with additional printed letters of dedication, all dated 5 Aug. 1471: to Louis XI in Paris BN, to Edward IV of England in Vaticano BAV, to Friedrich III in Vienna ÖNB; two further copies of the letter to Friedrich are in Halle (formerly in Magdeburg Gy, lacking the first leaf: GW Anm.1.4) and Freiburg i.Br. UB (without the body of the book: Sack). Several other copies have manuscript letters to various princes and prelates" (ISTC No.: ib00519000).

During the fifteenth century all printings of Plato were in Latin, beginning in 1472 with an edition of the Epistolae (Letters) issued in Paris by Ulrich Gering, Martin Crantz and Michael Friburger, who set up the first press in France at the University of Paris. This edition, of which ISTC No. ip0077300 records only four copies, is one of the rarest of incunabula. Next was the Apologia Socratis (Apology of Socrates) and Gorgias translated from the Greek by humanist Leonardo Bruni (Leonardus Brunus Aretinus) and printed in an undated edition in Bologna by an unknown printer called by bibliographers the "Printer of Barbatia, 'Johannina' (H 2429*)" and estimated to have been issued about 1475 (ISTC No. ip00775000). A few of the recorded copies consist of only one or the other of the two dialogues, suggesting that perhaps 15th century customers could purchase one or the other separately. 

Italian physician Paolo Bagellardo (d. 1494) had his treatise on pediatrics, De infantium aegritudinibus et remediis, printed in Padua at the press of Bartholomaeus de Valdezoccho and Martinus de Septem Arboribus. 

This was the first medical treatise, and probably also the first scientific treatise, to make its original appearance in printed form rather than having prior circulation in manuscript. It is also one of the two first books published in print by a living author, the other being Valturio's De re militari (1472).

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 102. ISTC no. ib00010000.

At Bruges, Belgium, in 1473 or 1474 English merchant, diplomat, writer, and printer William Caxton issued with scribe, bookseller and printer, Colard Mansion, Caxton's English translation of Raoul Lefèvre's The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye. ISTC no.  il00117000.

This was the first book printed in English. A presentation copy with a specially made engraving showing Caxton presenting the book to his patroness, Margaret of York, is preserved in the Huntington Library. Regarding the technical bibliographical aspects of this copy see Hellinga, "William Caxton, Colard Mansion, and the Printer in Type 1," Bulletin du bibliophile (2011) 106, footnote 2.

It is thought that Caxton learned the art of printing from Mansion.

In 1474 printer Arnold Ther Hoernen of Cologne, Germany issued the first printed edition of the Fasciculus temporum by Werner Rolevinck, a monk in the Carthusian Monastery of Santa Barbara in Cologne. A world chronicle from the creation to Pope Sixtus IV,  the title of Rolevinck's book may be translated as Bundle of Dates.  When his book was first printed Rolevinck was 49 years old; he lived until 1502.  During the 15th century there were 33 different printed editions and translations of Fasciculus temporum, making it one of the greatest best-sellers in print of the 15th century, and most probably the best-selling printed book of the 15th century by a living author.

Rolevinck's work also contains some of the earliest evidence of collaboration between an author and his printer in the design of printed books. A few contemporary manuscripts that have survived, such as those for the Nuremberg Chronicle, are similar to the complex typography and woodcuts of the printed edition, but none have been demonstrated to be the author's exemplar for the printer. (Wilson, The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle [1976] 38-41).

In the colophon of the 1474 first edition of Rolevinck's book printer Arnold Ther Hoernen stated that he was printing from a manuscript provided by the author. A translation of that reads: "following the first exemplar which this venerable author himself wrote by hand completely." Perhaps this manuscript also provided a model layout for Ther Hoernen to follow.  If so, he seems to have had great difficulty with the complicated page designs:

"The Fasciculus temporum, a fifty-age linear chart that moved from the Creation to the present, set out to give readers an overview of world history: a readable visual presentation that they could treat as both a memory system and as the spark for religious meditation. Rolevinck used a system of coordinated circles to locate biblical, classical and modern rulers and writers in the flow of historical time—a system so complicated that the first printer who grappled with it botched the job, producing an unintelligible text; later printers reasurred readers that they had followed the author's manuscript. And the results were most impressive: a neatly designed, powerfully horizontal line of time plunging forward from the Creation to the present. Around it nearly arranged and coordinated name bubbles and extracts from historical texts put meat on the book's numerical bones" (Rosenberg & Grafton, Cartographies of Time [2010] 28-30, with illustrations).

Regarding the art of printing Rolevinck wrote:

"This is the art of arts, the science of sciences, through the swift practice of which the valuable treasures of wisdom and of knowledge, instinctively desired by all men, leap as it were from the deep shadows of their hiding places, and enrich and illuminate this world in its evil state. The unlimited virtue of books which formerly in Athens or Paris and the other schools or sacred libraries was made known to a very few students is now spread by this discovery to every tribe, people, nation, and language everywhere, a true fulfillment of Proverbs, ch. 1" (http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=3422, accessed 06-15-2012).

For the 1474 Cologne printing see ISTC No. ir00254000.  In December 2012 a digital facsimile of the first edition was available from from the website of the Universität zu Köln.

According to the catalogue description of a fifteenth century manuscript of Fasiculus temporum sold at auction by PBA Galleries for $102,000 on June 21, 2012, thirteen manuscript copies of the work survived.

Printer Peter Schöffer of Mainz issued the first edition of the Codex Justinianus with the commentary of Franciscus Accursius. ISTC no. ij00574000. This is the first part of the Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law) originally issued from Contantinople from 529 to 534 by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I.

"Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis was lost in the West, where it was scarcely needed in the primitive conditions that followed the collapse of Odoacer's sub-Roman kingdom. Historians disagree on the precise way it was recovered in Northern Italy about 1070: perhaps it was waiting unneeded and unnoticed in a library until the legal studies that were undertaken on behalf of papal authority that was central to the Gregorian Reform of Pope Gregory VII led to its accidental rediscovery. Aside from the Littera Florentina, a 6th-century codex of the Pandects that was jealously preserved at Pisa, since 1406 at Florence, there may have been other manuscript sources for the text that began to be taught at Bologna, by Pepo and then by Irnerius, whose technique was to read a passage aloud, which permitted his students to copy it, then to deliver an excursus explaining and illuminating Justinian's text, in the form of glosses. Irmerius' pupils, the "Four Doctors" were among the first of the "Glossators" who established the curriculum of Roman law."

"The merchant classes of Italian communes required law with a concept of equity and which covered situations inherent in urban life better than the primitive Germanic oral traditions. The provenance of the Code appealed to scholars who saw in the Holy Roman Empire a revival of venerable precedents from the classical heritage. The new class of lawyers staffed the bureaucracies that were beginning to be required by the princes of Europe. The University of Bologna, where Justinian's Code was first taught, remained the dominant center for the study of law through the High Middle Ages."

Abraham ben Garton printed the first dated book in Hebrew at Reggio di Calabria, Italy. It was a commentary on the Torah by Rabbi Shlomo Rashi, and it remains one of the rarest of all books.

"Although Garton's book is the first dated printed edition, the work is neither the first edition of Rashi's commentary, nor the first book to be printed in Hebrew. Between 1469 and 1472 three brothers, Obadiah, Menasseh, and Benjamin of Rome, were active as the first Hebrew typographers. Six works are positively known to have come off their press, among which was the first, albeit undated edition of Rashi's commentary. Nonetheless, [in] the 1475 edition Abraham Garton created and employed, for the first time, a typeface based on a Sephardic semicursive hand. It was this same style of typeface that a few years later, when commentary and text were incorporated onto one page, would be used to distinguish Rabbinic commentary from the text proper. Ultimately, this typeface would be known as Rashi script" (Wikipedia article on Abraham Garton, accessed 07-25-2009).

The Incunabula Short Title Catalogue no. is00625180 cites only two incomplete copies: Parma "Pal" (imperfect), and New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America (2 leaves).

Printers Erhard Ratdolt, Bernhard Maler (Pictor), and Peter Löslein of Venice issued the Kalendario of Johannes Müller (Regiomontanus). ISTC no. ir00103000.

This was the first book in which the title and place, date, and printer's name appeared on a separate title page— an innovation that did not come into common use until the early 16th century. This book and a Latin version that Ratdolt, Maler and Löslein also issued in 1476 (ISTC ir00093000) were also the first books to be dated with Arabic rather than Roman numerals, and their title page was the first to be decorated with a woodcut border.

Prior to this date, and throughout the remainder of the 15th century, the title, place, and date of printing, as well as the printer's name were usually printed on the colophon leaf at the end of books, in the manner of medieval manuscripts. It took about 50 years after the invention of printing by movable type for the separate title page to become a convention.

♦ You can download a digital facsimile of this work from the Universität Wien at this link:  http://www.univie.ac.at/hwastro/rare/1476_Regiomontanus.htm, accessed 01-01-2010.

Smith, The Title-Page, its Early Development 1460-1510 (2000) 43-46.

Having learned the printer's art in Venice, Guillaume LeRoy set up a press in Lyon, France, at the expense of his financial backer, Bartholomieu Buyer. They located the press in Buyer's house.

There LeRoy printed Jean de Vigne's (de Vignay's) La légende dorée, Jean de Vigne's (de Vignay's) French translation of Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda aurea sanctorum, sive Lombardica historia edited by Jean Battalier. This was the first book printed in French. 

ISTC no. ij00151700 cites only three copies in England and three in France, of which two are incomplete.

Guillaume LeRoy became the first printer in Europe to specialize in printing books in the vernacular.

Drees, The Late Medieval Age of Crisis and Renewal 1300-1500 (2001) 286.

William Caxton completed at Westminster Abbey the first dated book printed in England— The Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres.

The work was translated from the French of Guillaume de Tignonville by Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, brother-in-law of King Edward IV.

ISTC no. id00272000.

Printer Johannes de Medemblick published from Colle di Val d'Elsa, Italy, the Latin text of De materia medica by the Greek military physician, Pedanius Dioscorides, who served in the army of the emperor Nero, and practiced in Rome in the first century CE.

A work of great practical medicinal value, Dioscorides's work remained in circulation throughout the Middle Ages, in Latin, Greek, and Arabic versions, and was often supplemented with commentary and additions from Arabic and Indian sources. The text of the herbal which Medemblick published in print was a medieval Latin translation, reworked into alphabetical order, with commentary by the thirteenth century professor of medicine at Padua, Pietro d' Abano.  

Dioscorides's text underwent numerous printed editions, many illustrated, and with commentaries, through the sixteenth century.

ISTC no. id00261000

By 1480 printing spread throughout the continent of Europe and England. Up to this date a typical print run of a book was between 100 and 300 copies.

In 1481 printer Bonus Accursius of Milan issued Psalterium Graeco-latinum cum Canticis. Edited by Johannes Crastonus, a Carmelite lexicographer, this liturgical psalter, publishing the Septuagint version of the Psalms with parallel Latin transation, was the earliest printing of any book of the Bible in Greek. Appended canticles including the Benedictus and the Magnificat, represented the first texts of the New Testament printed in Greek.

"The type in this psalter is similar to the very first Greek type ever cut. That first type was designed by calligrapher Demetrios Damilas, a Cretan of Milan. it was perhaps modelled on the hand of Michael Apostolis [Apostolios] (b. ca. 1422) a prolific scribe whose script was notable for its lack of ligatures (unlike, for example, the Greek types that would become favored by Aldus Manutius), making it an easy and readable handwriting to render into type. The type appeared first in an edition of Constantine Lascaris' Epitome (Milan, 1476), the first book printed entirely in Greek, and soon thereafter in two works issued by Bonus Accursius: a dictionary by Crastonus and an undated edition of Aesop. In about 1480, Accursius' books featured a new type, presumably because the earlier types were unavailable. This new type is a variant of the older one, but remains an upright cursive, relatively free of ligatures. The letters are larger, and there are many new letterforms introduced in this second version. This psalter is the fifth and last book Accursius printed with this type" (John E. Mustain, Monuments of Printing: Gutenberg Through the Book Arts Revival [2013] p. 30).

In 2012 Cornelia Linde published "Johannes Crastonus's 1481 Edition of the Psalms," The Library, XIII,Issue 2 pp. 147-63. doi: 10.1093/library/13.2.147.  In this paper she argued that Crastonus issued this edition of the Psalms for facilitating the learning of Greek. "On the basis of Psalm 1 and some additional examples, it explores how he employed the layout and changed the Latin text in order to achieve his goal. Furthermore, this article argues that the combination of works produced by Crastonus and his publisher Bonus Accursius were designed to provide a complete corpus for self-instruction in Greek." 

ISTC No.: ip01035000

On May 25, 1482 printer Erhard Ratdolt of Venice issued the first printed edition (editio princeps) of Euclid's Elements—Praeclarissimus liber elementorum Euclidis in artem geometriae. Ratdolt's text was based upon a translation from Arabic to Latin, presumably made by Abelard of Bath in the 12th century, edited and annotated by Giovanni Compano (Campanus of Novara) in the 13th century. The first printed edition of Euclid was the first substantial book to contain geometrical figures, of which it included over 400.

Ratdolt printed several copies with a dedicatory epistle in gold letters, including a dedication copy to the Doge of Venice. Of these, seven copies are preserved. To accomplish this technical feat:

"Ratdolt developed an innovative technique derived from the methods used by bookbinders to stamp gold on leather. This involved strewing a powdered bonding agent (either resin or dried albumen) on the page and probably heating the metal types so that the gold-leaf would stick to the paper. For his 1488 edition of the 'Chronica Hungarorum', Ratdolt employed a simpler method using golden printing ink. His technique of printing in golden letters was first copied in 1499 by the Venetian printer Zacharias Kallierges" (Wagner, Als die Lettern laufen lernten. Inkunabeln aus der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München [2009] no. 20).

In order to print the unusually large number of complex geometrical diagrams, usually containing type, in the margins Ratdolt used printer's "rules," i.e. thin strips of metal, type high, which he bent and cut and adjusted and set into a substance that would both hold them (and pieces of type) in place, and could itself be incised with the design as a guide to modelling and assembly.

Renzo Baldasso, "La stampa dell'editio princeps degli Elementi di Euclide (Venezia, Erhard Ratdolt, 1482)", The Books of Venice/Il libro veneziano, ed. Lisa Pon and Craig Kallendorf (2009) 61-100.

There are two distinct states of the first edition. The second state has leaves a1-a9 set differently from the first state: the heading on a1v is in two lines rather than three and is set in the same type as the text rather than heading type; the three-sided woodcut border and woodcut initial P are added to a2r; the headline in red on a2r begins "Preclarissimus liber elementorum"; and headlines do not begin until a10r. "The two outer pages of sheet c1 also differ, having been evidently reprinted owing to errors in the text and the diagram. . . of the 12th proposition of the 4th book" (B.M.C. vol. 5, 285-286.). See Horblit, One Hundred Books Famous in Science (1964) no. 27. for a detailed illustrated comparison of the two states. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 729.

♦ Characterized as the most famous textbook ever published, Euclid's Elements was one of the most widely printed and studied texts for the next 500 years. It is also considered to the most widely printed text after the Bible, with more than 1000 editions issued.

♦ You can view a digital facsimile of one of the copies with the dedication printed in gold from the website of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, at this link: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0003/bsb00037426/images/index.html?id=00037426&fip=67.164.64.97&no=4&seite=6, accessed 04-24-2010.

Based on the unusually large number of surviving copies, Ratdolt printed an edition considerably larger than the 300 copies considered average for a 15th century print run. You can view the long list of institutions which hold a copy at ISTC no. ie00113000.

The earliest medical work printed in English is Treatise on the pestilence published without printer's name or date, but attributed to the press of William Machlinia, in London. "Although often attributed in incunable editions to Benedictus Kamisius, Kamintus, Canutus or Kanuti (i.e. Bengt Knutsson, bishop of Västerâs), the author is probably Johannes Jacobi (i.e. Jean Jasme or Jacme) (Wickersheimer)" (ISTC no.  ij00013200).

J. F. Payne, "The Earliest Medical Work Printed in English", British Medical Journal v.1 [1480]; May 11, 1889, 1085-86.

Surprisingly, the collected works of Plato, the Opera, was not published in print until quite late in the 15th century, in an undated edition of the translation by humanist and Neoplatonist Marsilio Ficino issued in Florence by Laurentius (Francisci) de Alopa, Venetus (Lorenzo di Franciescho da Vinegia, Lorenzo de Alopa) from 1484-86. (ISTC No. ip00771000).

The printing of this edition was done in Florence at the press of the monastery of San Jacopo di Ripoli, the first press to employ women, in this case nuns from its convent who worked as compositors setting type. Remarkably the Diario of this press survived, recording its day-to-day operation and the production of 100 books from 1476 till the death of its founder Fra Domenico in 1484. This remains the earliest record from which the day-to-day operation of any fifteenth century press can be reconstructed.  It was edited with an introduction by Melissa Conway and published as The Diario of the Printing Press of San Jacopo di Ripoli 1476-1484: Commentary and Transcription (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1999). "The Diario documents 37 different print runs that were produced either on commission or as independent commercial ventures, and provides a unique contemporary record of the printing shop’s paper supplies, presswork, expenses, and prices, as well as 294 entries for the consignment of more than 3,500 copies of books and broadsides with local stationers, booksellers, and illuminators" (Eric White, A Census of Print Runs for Fifteenth-Century Books [2012-13] http://www.cerl.org/_media/resources/links_to_other_resources/printruns_intro.pdf, accessed 03-30-2013).

From the Conway edition (p. 17 ff) we learn that on January 25, 1484 the San Jacopo di Ripoli monastery press signed a contract for 1025 copies of Plato's Opera. The edition was funded by Francesco Berlinghieri and Filippo Valori, and was to be printed by Fra Domenico and his chief worker Lorenzo. Printing began on February 8, and by the end of September parts two to five of the five part work were completed. During this period, probably sometime in August, Fra Domenico died, and the responsibility for the project passed to Lorenzo, who had worked his way up from apprentice to to full partnership in the press. Because Lorenzo issued the completed work under his name alone, and he went on to become an important printer of humanistic and Greek texts in Florence, the fundamental role of the monastic press of San Jacopo di Ripoli— the first press to employ women— in this project, is often forgotten.

This edition was justifiably a bestseller, and copies were also probably very heavily used, as a high percentage of the roughly 100 extant copies are incomplete. On August 13, 1491 a second edition of Ficino's translation was issued in Venice by Bernardinus de Choris, de Cremona and Simon de Luere, for Andreas Torresanus, de Asula. According to the ISTC No. ip00772000 probably even more copies of this edition are preserved than the first edition, and notably fewer copies of the 1491 edition are incomplete. The editio princeps of Plato's works in Greek did not appear until the edition issued by Aldus Manutius of Venice in 1513.

Joshua Solomon ben Israel Nathan Soncino, in Soncino, Italy, issued the first printed edition of the German-rite Haggadah together with a small Roman-rite mahzor prayer book which he called, in Judeo-Italian, Sidorello. Each work had a separate colophon and decorated woodcut initials but no illustrations. Only two copies survived, one in the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the other in the British Library. ISTC no. ih00002700.

Yerushalmi, Haggadah and History. A Panorama in Facsimile and Five Centuries of the Printed Haggadah from the Collections of of Harvard University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Philadelphia (1975) 19-20, plate 2.

In 1486 Bernhard von Breydenbach, a wealthy canon of Mainz Cathedral, issued an extensively illustrated travel book, describing his pilgramage to Jerusalem entitled Peregrinatio in terram sanctam or Sanctae peregrinationes.

Von Breydenbach made the pilgrimage in 1483-4, taking with him, as the book explains, "Erhard Reuwich of Utrecht", a 'skillful artist', to make drawings of the sights. As the book relates, Reuwich also printed the first Latin edition of the book in his own house in Mainz, and it is also very probable that because Reuwich was the printer he took the opportunity to identify himself as the artist, since the creators of book illustrations were rarely identified at this time.

"Leaving in April 1483 and arriving back in January 1484, they travelled first to Venice, where they stayed for three weeks. They then took ship for Corfu, Modon and Rhodes - all still Venetian possessions. After Jerusalem and Bethlehem and other sights of the Holy Land, they went to Mount Sinai and Cairo. After taking a boat down the Nile to Rosetta, they took ship back to Venice."

"The Sanctae Peregrinationes, or the Peregrinatio in terram sanctam, was the first illustrated travel-book, and marked a leap forward for book illustration generally. It featured five large fold-out woodcuts, the first ever seen in the West, including a spectacular five-foot-long (1600 x 300 mm) woodcut panoramic view of Venice, where the pilgrims had stayed for three weeks. The book also contained a three-block map of Palestine and Egypt, centred on a large view of Jerusalem, and panoramas of five other cities: Iraklion, Modon, Rhodes, Corfu and Parenzo. There were also studies of Near Eastern costume, and an Arabic alphabet—also the first in print. Pictures of animals seen on the journey, including a crocodile, camel, and unicorn, were also included.

"The colophon of the book is a lively coat-of-arms of the current Archbishop of Mainz, which includes the first cross-hatching in woodcut.

"The book was a bestseller, reprinted thirteen times over the next three decades, including printings in France and Spain, for which the illustration blocks were shipped out to the local printers. The first edition in German was published within a year of the Latin one, and it was also translated into French, Dutch and Spanish before 1500. Additional text-only editions and various abridged editions were also published.

"The illustrations were later adapted by Michael Wolgemut for the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493, and much copied by various other publishers" (Wikipedia article on Erhard Reuwich, accessed 12-01-2008).

ISTC no. ib01189000.

From his press in Venice, German printer Erhard Ratdolt issued what is probably the earliest known type specimen. 

The only surviving copy of this broadside is preserved in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München. You can download a digital facsimile from their website at this link: http://inkunabeln.digitale-sammlungen.de/Exemplar_R-14,1.html, accessed 01-02-2010.

". . . having successfully run his printing workshop in Venice for more than ten years, Erhard Ratdolt began taking steps towards returning to Augsburg. In April 1485, while still in Venice, he published a breviary for the city of Augsburg (BSB-Ink B-844) which showed the high quality of the products of his printing workshop. A year later, Radolt accepted the invitation of the bishop of Augsburg Johannes of Werdenberg (1469-1486) and his successor Friedrich of Zollern (1486-1505) and returned to his home town to set up a press there. The change of location brought with it a change in the profile of his publications. Whereas in Venice Ratdolt had published numerous scientific and historical books, he now specialised more and more in printing liturgical works for hwich church commissions assured him a solid market.

"From Venice, Ratdolt brought various innovations to Augsburg which he had developed himself or adopted form others. With this broadside, Ratdolt advertised the diversity of fronts available in his printing house. The print, preserved only in the copy shown, is dated to 1 April 1486 and may have been produced while Ratdolt was still in Venice. It contains samples of 14 different fonts, of which ten use gothic letters, three humanist Roman and one Greek script, in a range of sizes. Among the gothic fonts, the Italian rotunda was used mainly for printing liturgical works. Besides advertising his well-equipped press, Ratdolt took the opportunity to praise himself amply as a man of great-ability (vir solertissimus) famous in Venice for his great talent and amazing skill (preclaro ingenio et mirifica arte. . .celbratissimus), who was now ready to publish books of examplary quality in the imperial city of Augsburg" (Wagner, Als die Lettern laufen lernten. Medienwandel im 15. Jahrhundert (2009) no. 40).

ISTC no. ir00029840

The Venetian Senate granted a privilege to the humanist Marco Antonio Sabellico for the printing of his Decades rerum Venetarum.

This document, preserved in the Venetian State Archives (ASV, NC, reg. 11, c.55r) was the first recorded privilege granted to an author, recognizing the right of Sabellico to authorize the publication of his work, and to secure protection against unauthorized printings. This has been called the first known author's copyright.

"Sabellico's privilege set the precedent for the custom of granting privileges not just to the printers but also directly to the authors. Such privileges are best understood as an extension of the traditional patronage system and as a form of reward rather than ownership. Sabellico's privilege was an exceptional arrangement in the sense that it was a form of reward for a literary work which promoted the public interest, rather than an assertion of the inherent rights of the author" (Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org, which also reproduces an image of the document, an English translation, and commentary).

Sabellico's work was first published in print in Venice the following year by Andreas Torresanus, de Asula. ISTC no. is00005000.

German Inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger published Malleus maleficarum  (The Hammer of Witches) in Speyer, Germany at the Press of Peter Drach. This was "without question the most important and most sinister work on demonology ever written.  It crystallized into a fiercely stringent code previous folklore about black magic with church dogma on heresy, and, if any one work could, opened the floodgates of the inquisitorial hysteria" (Robbins, Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology [1959] 337).

Malleus maleficarum became a best-seller, with six editions in the 15th century, thirty-six editions published during the witchcraft hysteria up to 1669, and it is thought that its widespread distribution, made possible by printing, contributed to the spread of the witchcraft delusion.

The work owed its authority to three factors:

1. The scholastic reputation of its two authors, the German Inquisitors Sprenger and Kramer.

2. The papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus of December 5, 1484, which Kramer solicited from Pope Innocent VIII in order to silence the opposition to witch persecution. ISTC no. ii00101500.

3. The detailed procedures for witchcraft trials set forth in the book's third and final part, written for the benefit of civil and ecclesiastical judges. As the leading handbook for witch-hunters, and the first encyclopedia of witchcraft, the Hammer of Witches maintained a pre-eminent position of authority for nearly 200 years, providing both foundation and inspiration for all later European treatises on witch-theory and persecution.

ISTC no. ii00163000.

At Soncino, Italy, Abraham ben Hayyim printed for Joshua Solomon Soncino Torah, Neviim, Ketuvim, the first complete printed Hebrew Bible.

It is thought that 200-300 copies were issued, and at a high price. In 1492 German humanist and Greek and Hebrew scholar Johannes Reuchlin purchased a copy in Rome for 6 gold coins, supposedly a year's salary for a government clerk at the time.

ISTC no. ib00525500.

Aboard the caravel Niña, sailing back from the New World, Christopher Columbus wrote an open letter to the monarchs of Spain, describing his monumental discoveries. When he docked in Lisbon, Portugal on March 14 Columbus added a postscript and sent the letter to the Escribano de Racion, Luis de Santangel, finance minister to Ferdinand II and the high steward or comptroller of the king's household expenditures. Santagel had convinced  Isabella I to back Columbus's voyage eight months earlier, and Santagel was the first convey the news of Columbus's success to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand.

Santagel turned over the text of Columbus's letter to printer Pedro Posa in Barcelona, and as early as April 1, 1493, Posa issued a 4-page pamphlet in small folio entitled Epistola de insulis nuper inventis (Letter on Newly Discovered Islands). Only one copy of the original printing survives. It was discovered in Spain in 1889, and passed through the hands of antiquarian bookseller Maisonneuve in Paris before reaching antiquarian bookseller Bernard Quaritch in 1890. In 1892 Quaritch sold it to the Lenox Library founded by James Lenox. This library later merged with the New York Public Library where the pamphlet is preserved today. ISTC no. ic00756000.

Columbus's letter was the first eyewitness news account to become a bestseller. The second edition, published in Spanish in Valladolid, also survives only in a single copy. ISTC no. ic00756500.

The third edition, in Latin, was published in Rome by Stephen Plannck, probably in early May 1493. ISTC no. ic00757000.

The first illustrated edition, with woodcuts supposedly copied from drawings by Columbus, was issued by Michael Furter, for Johann Bergmann, de Olpe, in Basel, Switzerland, probably in May, 1493. ISTC no. ic00760000.

♦ You can view a digital facsimile of the Basel edition from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München, at this link: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0002/bsb00026585/images/index.html?id=00026585&fip=67.164.64.97&no=6&seite=8, accessed 01-02-2010.

Giuliano Dati translated the letter into Italian verse for publication in Rome June 15, 1493. ISTC no. id00045890. Dati's version was reprinted in Florence and Brescia in 1493. Of each printing of Dati's version only one copy survived.

Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 35.

Between June 12, 1493 printer Anton Koberger of Nuremberg published the Liber chronicarum written by the physician Hartmann Schedel. A large-folio compendium of history, geography and natural wonders, the Liber chronicarum contained 298 printed leaves, including 1,809 illustrations from 645 woodcuts by or after painter and woodengraver Michael Wohlgemut (Wohlgemuth), his stepson Wilhelm Plydenwurff, and possibly some by Koberger's godson, the young Albrecht Dürer, who was apprenticed to Wohlgemut until 1490. Certain woodcuts were reproduced more than once, sometimes for the depiction of different people or cities. The images included a full-sheet map of Europe, a Ptolemaean world map, large and small city views, biblical and historical scenes, and portraits.

♦You can view a digital facsimile of the Latin edition at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek at this link: http://dfg-viewer.de/show/?set%5Bmets%5D=http%3A%2F%2Fdaten.digitale-sammlungen.de%2F~db%2Fmets%2Fbsb00034024_mets.xml, accessed 11-06-2012).

"From the outset, however, a German-language version had been planned. Translated by Georg Alt (c. 1450-1510), the city treasurer of Nuremberg, who assisted Schedel in compiling the Latin edition, the German edition was published on December 23, 1493. In addition to cosmetic differences (e.g., the Latin edition was printed using a typeface known as Antiqua Rotunda, while the German employed Bastarda Schwabacher), the German edition is very slightly abridged, with omissions that include certain abstruse thoughts as well as seeming repetitions. Occasionally, however, the German Chronicle includes minor but telling expansions on the Latin text. For example, in the Latin version one is told that a certain idea "can be found in Ovid" (folio IIr); the German version, however, informs its readers that this same idea "was elegantly expressed by Ovid, a poet." Such differences point to slightly different readerships: the Latin was aimed at the imperial, theological, and academic markets; the German at the upper middle class who did not possess a university education. Scholars estimate that approximately 1400-1500 Latin copies and 700-1000 German ones were printed. A document from 1509 has the final account of the sales of the two editions. It is interesting to note that 535 Latin and 60 German copies remained unsold. . . . " (http://www.beloit.edu/nuremberg/inside/about/editions.htm, accessed 11-06-2012). 

♦ You can view a digital facsimile of the German translation at the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek, Weimar, at this link: http://ora-web.swkk.de/digimo_online/digimo.entry?source=digimo.Digitalisat_anzeigen&a_id=4218, accessed 01-02-2010.

Though the information in the Nuremberg Chronicle was rapidly superceded, it remained famous for its extraordinary graphic design, its printing, its woodcuts and descriptions of cities. One of the woodcuts depicted the paper mill established in Nuremberg by Ulman Stromer in 1390.

Probably because it was such a large and impressive volume, the work was a great commercial success, with an unusually large printings for a fifteenth century book:

"The Latin edition was printed in at least 1400 copies, of which more than 1200 still exist today" (Wagner, Als die Lettern laufen lernten. Medienwandel im 15. Jahrhundert [2009] no. 11 (describing the annotated copy of the author, Hartmann Schedel, which is preserved at the Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, Munich).

Most probably fewer copies of the German edition were printed, as it remains rarer on the market. Between roughly 1980 and 2009 there were 188 auction sales recorded for the Latin edition and 35 sales of the German edition, some sales presumably representing the same copies being resold.

Remarkably, the original manuscript exemplars showing the exact arrangement of the text and illustrations for both the Latin and German editions, as well has other original documents pertaining to the publication of these works, were preserved. The exemplar for the Latin edition is in the Stadbibliothek Nürnberg. The exemplar for the German edition is in the Nuremberg City Library. Adrian Wilson, a book designer and historian of book design from San Francisco, issued an outstanding book in which he showed the relationship between these manuscript exemplars and the printed editions: The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle (1976).

The only English translation of the Nuremberg Chronicle was prepared by Walter W. Schmauch of Chicago, perhaps in 1941. This existed as a typescript for many years, preserved in the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia.  The title page of the translation, of which I obtained a complete xerographic copy decades ago, reads: First English Edition of the Nuremberg Chronicle. Being the Liber Chronicarum of Dr. Hartmann Schedel, A. D. 1493. Translated from the First German Edition by Walter W. Schmauch of Chicago with Text Annotations and Woodcut Elucidations in Six Volumes.  The translation extends to at least 2000 pages of typescript. In 2003 Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin, and the University of Wisconsin collaborated on publishing Schmauch's entire translation online at http://www.beloit.edu/nuremberg/index.htm, accessed 11-06-2012).

ISTC no. is00307000 (Latin). ISTC no. is00309000 (German).

Sebastian Brant published Das Narrenschiff (The Ship of Fools) in Basel, Switzerland at the press of Johann Bergmann, de Olpe. Some of the woodcuts illustrating this work were by the young Albrecht Dürer.

Brandt's satire became a great bestseller. It included a characterization and woodcut illustration of the "book fool" who enjoyed owning many books but read few of them. That book-collecting had become a topic for satire by this time is a reflection of the proliferation of books since the invention of printing by moveable type.

The popularity of Brandt's satire was in itself a reflection of the proliferation of books. Twenty-six different editions appeared in the 15th century. Brandt authorized six editions in German during his lifetime and there were at least six other unauthorized editions published. The work was translated into Latin by Jacob Locher in 1497 (Stultifera Navis), into French by Paul Riviere in 1497 and by Jehan Droyn in 1498. An English verse translation by Alexander Barclay appeared in London in 1509, and again in 1570; one in prose by Henry Watson in London, 1509; and again 1517. It was also rendered into Dutch and Low German.

ISTC no. ib01080000.

English printer Wynkyn de Worde, successor to William Caxton, printed at Westminister an edition of the encyclopedic work by Bartholomaeus Anglicus,  De proprietatibus rerum, in the English translation of John Trevisa, illustrated with woodcuts, mostly derived from the numerous earlier editions. This work was the first book printed in England on paper made at the first English paper mill, operated by John Tate from around 1495 till his death in 1507.

Remarkably, the original unillustrated manuscript, substantially marked up by the compositors, for a portion of this work, is preserved in the Plimpton Collection at Columbia University Library. Plimpton

"purchased it from Quaritch who had bought it when Lord Middleton's library was sold at auction in 1925. The large and beautiful codex was made for Sir Thomas Chaworth of Wiverton, Notts., about 1440; it apparently soon became the property of the Willoughby family, neighbors and kin of the Chaworths, in whose possession it remained until the sale of Lord Middleton's books in 1925. (Thomas Willoughby was created Baron Middleton 1 January 1711/12). Throughout the nearly 500 years in which the MS. was in private hands it was all but unknown to scholars" (Three Lions cited below, 18).

Wynkyn de Worde's printed text deviates substantially from the manuscript. A second manuscript source, no longer extant, was also a source for the edition. 

♦ Three Lions and the Cross of Lorraine: Bartholomaeus Anglicus, John of Trevisa, John Tate, Wynkyn de Worde and De Proprietatibus Reum. A Leaf Book with Essays by Howell Heaney, Dr. Lotte Hellinga, Dr. Richard Hills. Newton, PA: Bird & Bull Press (1992) details my role in supplying the very incomplete copy of the Wynkyn de Worde printing, containing 138 leaves, which became the basis for the edition, and determined the number of copies printed.

"Worde is generally credited for moving English printing away from its late-Medieval beginnings and toward a modern model of functioning. Caxton had depended on noble patrons to sustain his enterprise; while de Worde enjoyed the support of patrons too (principally Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII), he shifted his emphasis to the creation of relatively inexpensive books for a commercial audience and the beginnings of a mass market. Where Caxton had used paper imported from the Low Countries, de Worde exploited the product of John Tate, the first English papermaker. De Worde published more than 400 books in over 800 editions (though some are extant only in single copies and many others are extremely rare). His greatest success, in terms of volume, was the Latin grammar of Robert Whittington, which he issued in 155 editions. Religious works dominated his output, in keeping with the tenor of the time; but de Worde also printed volumes ranging from romantic novels to poetry (he published the work of John Skelton and Stephen Hawes), and from children's books to volumes on household practice and animal husbandry. He innovated in the use of illustrations: while only about 20 of Caxton's editions contained woodcuts, 500 of de Worde's editions were illustrated.

"He moved his firm from Caxton's location in Westminster to London; he was the first printer to set up a site on Fleet Street (1500), which for centuries became synonymous with printing. He was also the first man to build a book stall in St. Paul's Churchyard, which soon became a center of the book trade in London.

"De Worde was the first to use italic type (1528) and Hebrew and Arabic characters (1524) in English books; and his 1495 version of Polychronicon by Ranulf Higdon was the first English work to use movable type to print music" (Wikipedia article on Wynkyn de Worde, accessed 01-10-2008).

Dard Hunter, The Literature of Papermaking 1390-1800 (1925) 13. ISTC no. ib00143000.

Scholar printer, Aldus Manutius of Venice, issued the Idyllia of Theocritus in Greek along with other works in Greek and Latin, including the writings of Hesiod. (ISTC no. it00144000).

"We must not ask of Aldine editions what they cannot give, a balanced critical recension which even in our own day has hardly been achieved for many Greek authors. The aims of textual purity and correctness were often trumpeted in early editions, long before Aldus, indeed, but with special emphasis in his prefaces. But these aims, no doubt genuinely held, all too frequently succumbed to the messy pressures of the printing house, as the number of errata pages attached to his editions attest. Something is better than nothing, Aldus says in the preface to Theocritus in 1496, and a text once printed can at least find many correctors where a manuscript can only receive occasional emendation. This of course is true in the long run, but sidesteps the whole problem of corrupt texts being fixed in hundreds of copies by the printing press" (Davies, Aldus Manutius, Printer and Publisher of Renaissance Venice [1999] 23).

Scholar printer Aldus Manutius (Teobaldo Mannucci) of Venice issued Aristotle's Opera omnia in Greek in five volumes, often bound in six. 

The Aldine editio princeps of Aristotle's collected works, containing all but the Poetics and On Rhetoric, appeared at the close of a century that had witnessed a strong revival in Greek and humanistic studies; it was the first major Greek prose text to be reintroduced to the Western world in its original language by means of the printing press. In addition to the Aristotelian works, the five volumes contain works by Theophrastus, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Porphyrius and Philon the Jew, along with the spurious De historia philosophia attributed to Galen.

" 'The Aldine Aristotle' remains, in terms of the labour involved and the magnificence of the result, the greatest publishing venture of the fifteenth century. The centrality of Aristotle in intellectual life of the time can hardly be overstressed. In Latin dress he lay at the heart of any university course in philosophy, as dominant at the end of the Quattrocento as in the preceding three hundred years. The humanist return ad fontes, to the original unobscured by imprecise translation and the encrustations of scholastic commentary, was the indispenable background to the edition. . . .

"Certain important Aristotelian works were as yet unfindable, notably the Rhetoric and the Poetics—Aldus was later to print the first Greek editions of both. The second volume is largely taken up with the works of Theophrastus, the sucessor of Aristotle in the Athenian Lyceum. . . . (Davies, Aldus Manutius, Printer and Publisher of Renaissance Venice (1999) 20-22.

Dibner, Heralds of Science, no. 73.  Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 38. Renouard, Aldus Manutius, pp. 7-9. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 70.

ISTC No.: ia00959000

Fewer than 150 editions of Hebrew incunabula (15th century books) were produced— less than half a percent of the total production of printed books during the 15th century.

By the end of the 20th century only about 2000 copies of all these editions combined were preserved in institutional libraries. The editions were printed in Italy, Spain and Portugal, and one edition was published in the Ottoman Empire. Many of these editions are very rare, with one-third of them known in only one, two or three copies.

About 1500 Humanist printer Aldus Manutius of Venice described on a single printed sheet preserved in the Vatican Library (Stamp. Barb. AAAIV 13) the Rules of the Modern Academy.

“He calls for those concerned with preparing and correcting editions of the Greek classics in his shop in Venice (many of whom were émigrés from Greece or Crete) to speak only classical Greek. Those who fail to do so must pay fines, and when these have sufficiently accumulated, they are to be used to pay for a ’symposium’—a lavish common meal (the rule states that it must be better than the food given printers, which was legendarily meager.) The Renaissance idea of the publishing house as a center of learning emerges vividly” (Anthony Grafton, "The Vatican and its Library," Grafton (ed.) Rome Reborn [1993] 15, plate 11).

"The well defined traditional groups of readers knew Latin, and many read it with ease and better than their own mother tongue. Books in the vernacular languages were for 'every man, as well rude as learned,' and the student of literacy and literary taste must be as much concerned with the 'rude' as with the learned. Latin, the language of the educated, was the international language throughout the Middle Ages; this fact is reflected by the book production. Slightly more than three-fourths of surviving incunables are in Latin, the rest in different verancular languages. Throughout the XVIth century the percentage of books in the verancular increased, caused in part by the mounting concern of authors, printers and publishers with the 'rude' (men, women and children who were able or willing to read books in their own tongue, but not in Latin). It is also true that the importance of Latin as the language of communication among the learned declined, in spite of the revival of learning and increased concern with the classics and their style. Already during the first half of the XVIth century books in Latin and those in the vernacular languages were much more evenly distributed, and by the end of the XVIth century the latter accounted probably for more than half of the total production. Latin had lost its international character except among the clergy (of the Catholic Church), a coterie of Neo-Latin writers, and limited groups of scholars and professionals. National languages had won the battle. The favorable reception of books in the mother tongue was only one of several causes. Political and religious ferment of this period involved an ever increasing number of persons. In order to reach the largest possible number, the leaders and the propagandists turned more and more to the vernacular. A third factor was the changing attitude of the educated towards their own native language" (Hirsch, Printing, Selling, Reading 1450-1550 [1967] 132). 

In March 2013 A Census of Print Runs for Fifteenth-Century Books by Eric Marshall White, Curator of Special Collections at the Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University, came to my attention. White's research, published in the form of a database, and prefaced by a scholarly introduction which documented prior work on the topic, was published on the website of the Consortium of European Research Libraries, www.cerl.org. From White's introduction I quote a few representative selections. White's footnotes, not included here, will be found in the PDF downloadable from the website:

"Many historians seeking to measure the impact of the ‘printing revolution’ in fifteenth century Europe have taken a quantitiative approach, multiplying the total of all editions by the number of copies in a typical edition. However, whereas the Incunable Short Title Catalog (ISTC) lists more than 28,000 fifteenth-century editions that are represented by surviving specimens, the number of lost editions will always remain indeterminate. The second factor in the equation – the typical or ‘average’ fifteenth-century print run – is just as indeterminate as the first, if not more so. Inevitably, the ‘editions × copies’ formula has produced estimates of fifteenth-century press production that range anywhere from eight million to more than twenty million pieces of reading material. Such irreconcilable results (in which the margin for error may be larger than the answer itself) only serve to demonstrate that any effort to arrive at a meaningful quantification of fifteenth-century press production will require a much more systematic analysis of the available data on print runs. The present study, a census of print runs for fifteenth-century books, takes a step in that direction by asking a much more basic question: what is the available data?"

"Historically, as several scholars have conceded, our knowledge of early print runs has been lamentably poor. However, this is not because data does not exist – the print runs of fifteenth-century books currently number more than 250 editions – but because the data has remained so unavailingly scattered throughout a vast literature dedicated to other questions. Consequently, even well-informed specialists have been able to call forth only a few familiar examples, such as the 37 fairly uniform print runs publicized in 1472 by Conradus Sweynheym and Arnoldus Pannartz at Rome,6 the seventeen print runs (including a spurious Breviarium) canonized in Konrad Haebler’s essential Handbuch der Inkunabelkunde, 7 or the 33 print runs recorded in the Diario of the Florentine press at San Jacopo di Ripoli (1476-1484). In 1998, however, the first truly extensive catalogue of fifteenth-century print runs, moving beyond the usual suspects, was compiled by Uwe Neddermeyer. Unfortunately, his table of “bekannte Auflagenhöhen” (known print runs) for the fifteenth century actually includes an undifferentiated mix of about 130 true print runs as well asseveral dozen inconclusive, speculative, or spurious entries. Therefore, because Neddermeyer’s list is not accompanied by the original documentation, one has to perform considerable research simply to verify which fraction of his data is truly useful. In contrast, each of the 250+ print runs listed in the present CERL-based census has been included on the basis of contemporary documentation. It is hoped that in the near future we will be able to provide transcriptions of these primary sources and citations of secondary literature for virtually all of the census entries."

By this date printing presses were established in 282 cities.

"These are situated in some 20 countries in terms of present-day boundaries. In descending order of the number of editions printed in each, these are: Italy, Germany, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, England, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Portugal, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Turkey, Croatia, Montenegro, Balearic Islands, Hungary, and Sicily."

"The 18 languages that incunabula are printed in, in descending order, are: Latin, German, Italian, French, Dutch, Spanish, English, Hebrew, Catalan, Czech, Greek, Church Slavonic, Portuguese, Swedish, Breton, Danish, Frisian, and Sardinian."

"Only about one edition in ten (i.e. just over 3000) has any illustrations, woodcuts or metalcuts. The 'commonest' incunabulum is Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle ("Liber Chronicarum") of 1493, with c. 1250 surviving copies (which is also the most heavily illustrated). Very many incunabula are unique, but on average about 18 copies survive of each. This makes the Gutenberg Bible, at 48 or 49 known copies, a rather common (though extremely valuable) edition" (Wikipedia article on incunabulum, accessed 12-01-2008).

The average print run of a 15th century printed book has been estimated by some methods of calculation as between 400-500 copies, with as many as 1000 copies, or more, of some books printed. By one method it was estimated that printers issued up to 35,000 different printed works of all kinds, including pamphlets and broadsides as well as books, with a total printed output somewhere around 15 to 20 million copies. Presumably no copies of certain publications—especially ephemera—survived.

♦ In January 2008 the Incunabula Short Title Database maintained by the British Library recorded 29,777 editions printed from moveable type, but not from woodblocks or engraved plates, before 1501. These included  "some 16th-century items previously assigned incorrectly to the 15th century." The number of true incunabula recorded in the database was  27,460— thought to be very close to complete coverage of the number of extant incunabula, which was estimated at 28,000.

Having obtained in 1498 a twenty-year exclusive license for printing music in the Venetian Republic, Octaviano Petrucci published Harmonice Musices Odhecaton. This was the first book of sheet music printed using movable type. It was an anthology of 96 secular songs,  mostly polyphonic French chansons, for three or four voice parts. For this work Petrucci printed two parts on the right-hand side of a page, and two parts on the left, so that four singers or instrumentalists could read from the same sheet.

"The type was probably designed, cut, and cast by Francesco Griffo and Jacomo Ungaro, both of whom were in Venice at the time. The collection included music by some of the most famous composers of the time, including Johannes Ockeghem, Josquin des Prez, Antoine Brumel, Antoine Busnois, Alexander Agricola, Jacob Obrecht, and many others, and was edited by Petrus Castellanus, a Dominican friar who was maestro di cappella of San Giovanni e Paolo. Inclusion of composers in this famous collection did much to enhance their notability, since the prints, and the technology, were to spread around Europe in the coming decades.

"The Odhecaton used the double-impression technique, in which first the musical staff was printed, and then the notes in a second impression. Most of the 96 pieces, although they were written as songs, were not provided with the text, implying that instrumental performance was intended for many of them. Texts for most can be found in other manuscript sources or later publications."

When Petrucci printed music with verbal text or lyrics he employed three impressions: first for the staffs, second for the notes, and third for the lyrics.

♦ No complete copy of the first edition of the Odhecaton (Harmonice Musices Odhecaton A) survives, and its exact publication date is not known, but it includes a dedication dated May 15, 1501. The second and third editions were printed on January 14, 1503 and May 25, 1504, respectively. Each corrected several errors of the previous editions. Petrucci published two further anthologies, the Harmonice Musices Odhecaton B and C, in 1502 and 1504, respectively.

"Petrucci's publication not only revolutionized music distribution: it contributed to making the Franco-Flemish style the international musical language of Europe for the next century, since even though Petrucci was working in Italy, he chiefly chose the music of Franco-Flemish composers for inclusion in the Odhecaton, as well as in his next several publications. A few years later he published several books of native Italian frottole, a popular song style which was the predecessor to the madrigal, but the inclusion of Franco-Flemish composers in his many publications was decisive on the diffusion of the musical language" (Wikipedia article on Harmonice Musices Odhecaton).

Highly controversial Pope Alexander VI (Roderic Llançol, later Roderic de Borja i Borja, Italian: Rodrigo Borgia) published his bull, Inter Multiplices. In this bull Alexander confirmed that an ecclesiastical imprimatur was necessary. Archbishops, especially those of Cologne, Magdeburg, Trier, and Mainz were to prohibit, under pain of excommunication, latae sententiae, the printing of books in their provinces without their imprimatur, which was to be granted gratis. Secondly, the censorial powers of the Archbishops could be delegated to local authorities. Third, the scope of the censorship was confined to questions of what is orthodoxae fidei contrarium; questions of public or private morality were apparently not included. The jurisdiction extended over corporations, universities and colleges. The civil powers could be invoked if necessary, and in order to strengthen the interest of the local authorities, they were to receive half of the monetary penalties collected.  

Printer Aldus Manutius of Venice issued an edition of Virgil in Italic type designed by Francesco Griffo. This was the first book completely printed in Italic type, an adaptation of humanist script. In addition to its elegant design, Italic type had the advantage of a higher character count, allowing more information to be printed legibly in less space than Roman or Gothic type. Aldus’s edition of Virgil was the first of a series of volumes that he issued in the pocket, or octavo format. This smaller format had previously been used for editions of devotional texts, but Aldus was the first to use the smaller format to make non-devotional literature available in the more portable format, and at lower cost. Davies points out that a signifcant reason for Aldus's introduction of the octavo format was the collapse of the credit market in Venice in 1500 caused by "Venetian defeats and Turkish advances," which caused many business failures, and would have motivated Aldus to publish books that could be sold at lower cost.

"The innovation lay not in the small format, often used by printers for devotional texts, but in applying it to a class of literature hitherto issued in large and imposing folios or quartos. It is also certain that the small-format manuscripts in Bernardo Bembo's library included a good number written by the leading Paduan scribe, Bartolomeo Sanvito, whose hand seems to be the best and closest model for the Aldine italic.

"This famous type was a sympathetic rendering by Francesco Griffo of the best humanist cursive script of the day, a wholly new departure in Latin typography but parallel to Aldus's adaptation of Greek cursive hands for his earlier work. If italic has today become practically confined to words that convention dictates be 'italicized', we must also recognize that it appeared to contemporaries as a revelation of elegance -- to Erasmus, 'the neatest types in the world'. The narrow set of the type is also very economical of paper, an important consideration in those days. The very first appearance is in a few words set in the woodcut that adorns the folio St Catherine . . . , followed by limited use in the preface to the second (quarto) edition of Aldus's Latin grammar of February 1501. Italic reached its manifest destiny as the text type of the book which began Aldus's great series of octavo classics, the Virgil of April 1501" (Martin Davies, Aldus Manutius: Printer and Publisher of Renaissance Venice [1999] 42).

Aldus' pocket editions of Virgil were a commercial success:

".. . . By the time of the dedication to Bembo in 1514, Aldus had already exhausted two editions of the works of Virgil (which we can estimate to have been about 3,000 for each run). By contrast, nearly all the incunable editions of his Greek folios were still available in the third advertisement of 1513, some at reduced prices. Not that the octavos were cheap—Isabella d'Este, the learned Marchioness of Mantua (and another former pupil of Battista Guarino), sent back some vellum copies she had ordered when she was told by her courtiers that they were worth no more than half the price Aldus's partners were asking. These may have been special illuminated copies costing five ducats or more—some exquisite vellum editions that she did buy from Aldus survive in the British Library—but even the plain paper copies, according to Aldus's annotation of the 1503 advertisement, went for a substantial quarter of a ducat" (Davies, op. cit., 46).

From his shop in Fleet Street, London, printer and publisher Wynkyn de Worde issued The Boke of Kervynge.  This was the first book in English on carving and preparing different types of meat, game and fish. Of the first edition only a single copy survived, at the University Library Cambridge. Similarly only a single copy survived of the second edition dated 1513. It is preserved in the British Library.

Quayle, Old Cook Books. An Illustrated History (1978) 27-28.

On May 22, 1511 Veronese architect, antiquary, archaeologist, and classical scholar, Fra Giovanni Giocondo published the first illustrated edition of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio's De architectura in Venice at the press of Giovanni Tacuino. The edition contained 136 woodcut text illustrations, woodcut initials and a woodcut title-border. The title-border, a continuous design in four parts incorporating dolphins, leaves and flowers, may be the original of one of the most influential and widely copied pieces of printed ornamentation in the 16th century. Geofroy Tory copied the border (without the shading) to use on his 1525 Horace, and variations of the floreated dolphin design appear in books from all the major European centers of printing.

This fourth printed edition, the first to be illustrated with more than diagrams, was prepared by Fra Giovanni Giocondo, the Veronese architect who took over the construction of St. Peter's in Rome after Donato Bramante's death. The illustrations probably date from around the time of printing, as those that might have accompanied Vitruvius's original text on papyrus rolls or early parchment codices had been lost for centuries.

Mortimer, Harvard College Library, Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, Italian 16th Century Books (1974) No. 543. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) No. 2157.

The earliest English newsbook, a forerunner of the newspaper, may be a pamphlet of 4 leaves called Hereafter ensue thee trew encountre or Batayle lately don betwene. Englande and: Scotlande. In whiche batayle the. Scottsshe. Kinge was slayne, printed in London by Richard Fawkes (Faques). The pamphlet provides an eyewitness account of the large and bloody Battle of Flodden Field won by the English against the Scots, with a list of the English heroes involved.

Printing and the Mind of Man. Catalogue of the Exhibitions Held at the British Museum and at Earls Court, London (1963) no. 640. Schwarz, Vivat Rex! An Exhibition Commemorating the 500th Anniversary of the Accession of Henry VIII (2009) no. 24.

The Morgan Library and Museum holds a contemporary manuscript account of the Battle of Flodden Field: MA 3673. Schwarz, Vivat Rex!, no. 25.

Italian architect, astrologer, mathematician, and writing-master Sigismondo Fanti published Theorica et practica . . .de modo scribendi fabricandique omnes literarum species in Venice. 

This was the first illustrated manual on the art of writing, and the first book illustrated with calligraphic models of the alphbet. It provided practical advice on selecting implements, making ink, on the correct way of holding the pen, and on spacing letters.

Osley, Luminario. An Introduction to the Intalian Writing-Books of the 16th & 17th Centuries (1972) 5-13.

At Fez (Fes), Morocco, Samuel ben Isaac Nedivot and his son Isaac, Jewish refugees who had worked for the printer Rabbi Eliezer Toledano in Lisbon, set up the first press on the African continent. The first book they printed was an exact copy of the Sefer Abudarham which they had helped to produce iat Toledano's press in Lisbon in 1489, twenty-seven years earlier. The only changes were in the colophon, which in 1516 celebrated "the holy labors of 'the honored and pious Samuel ... and his learned and wise son Isaac, whose desire it is to produce book, beyond number for all to study and read ... may God reward them for their beneficence ... and in their days may we see redemption ... [and alluding to the contents of the published volume] then we will sing a new song in the house of God.' "

The Sefer Abudarham was the first book in any language printed on the African continent. In the introduction, the Nedivots complained that they encountered great difficulty in obtaining paper because the Spanish government ordered that paper not be sold to them. But they persisted and in the course of a decade they were able to print fifteen books.

In 1517 printer and publisher Alessandro Minuziano of Milan issued, with official permission of Pope Leo X, P. Cornelii Taciti libri quinque noviter inventi atque cum reliquis eius operibus editi. This was initially an unauthorized reprint or piracy of the first complete edition of the Annales, Historiae and other writings by the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus, edited, using a manuscript owned by Pope Leo X, by humanist and librarian of the Vatician, Filippo Beroaldo, the Younger. That edition had been first published in Rome by Stephanus Guilleretus de Lotheringia in 1515.

In 1508 Pope Leo X, formerly Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, had the opportunity to purchase a manuscript of the "lost" first books of Tactitus's Annals.  The manuscript had been stolen from the monastery of Corvey in Westphalia, but that did not deter a passionate collector. On November 14, 1514 Leo granted Beroaldo the exclusive right or privilegio for printing the text. Violators of the privilegio were threatened with excommunication.  Beroaldo's edition was the first to include Books I-VI of the Annals, and also the first to include the "Annotationes" of the jurist and legal humanist Andrea Alciato (Alciati, Andreas Alciatus).

"According to the well-known story, the codex containing the six books by Tacitus (the so-called 'Mediceo primo" [Laurentianus Mediceus 68.1] had been stolen from the monastery of Corvey in Westphalia. In 1508 it was in the hands of Francesco Soderini from whom it was acquired by Cardinal Giovanini de' Medici (the future Leo X). In 1515, after becoming pope, Leo X granted Beroaldo the exclusive rights to the printing of the book. One of the printed books Leo sent to the Abbey of Corvey, together with a plenary indulgence, as a replacement for the 'borrowed' manuscript. Much to the annoyance of Leo X, the Milanese scholar and publisher Alessandro Minuziano ignored the  paper privilegio and reprinted Beroaldo's edition of Tacitus word-for-word. Minuziano was duly summoned to Rome to answer directly to the Pope. His detailed apology, however, appealed Leo X's anger and, with a papal letter of absolution, Minuziano was permitted to publish the work, provided he came to terms with Filippo Beroaldo" (Witcombe, Copyright in the Renaissance: Prints and the Privilegio in Sixteenth-Century Venice and Rome (2004) 48-49).

Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print 1470-1550 (1994) 301-02 point out that Minuziano attempted to skirt the privilegio in a clever way, which involved illegal cooperation with someone working in the printing office of Stephanus Guilleretus de Lotheringia in Rome: 

"In the meantime in Rome the issue of privileges had suddenly been brought to the attention of Leo X when it was discovered in 1515 that the Milanese publisher Alessandro Minuziano had found a loophole in the privilege granted to Filippo Beroaldo for his Storie. Minuziano did not copy the whole book once it had appeared, but page after page (obtained illegally) while it was being printed. The main reason the Pope was so exceeding angry was that he had paid the vast sum of 500 ducats for the manuscript. . . ."

Because he was copying the Rome edition as fast as it was being printed we may presume that Minuziano intended to issue his pirated edition almost simultaneously with the 1515 Rome edition. However his scheme was found out, and the dispute over the privilegio forced Minuziano to suspend publication until the matter was resolved. The matter was serious, especially as Leo X actively involved himself in issues of publication and censorship. Because the case was eventually resolved in Minuziano's favor he added an appendix to the edition containing the key documents pertaining to the case. These included the papal privilege of November 14, 1514, Minuziano's “supplication and prayers” to Leo X of March 30, 1516, defending himself, remarkably, by claiming ignorance of the Pope’s privilegio, pleading for absolution and to be allowed to finish his edition, and the papal letter of pardon dated September 7, 1516, reiterating Minuziano’s defense, and granting Minuziano permission to publish his edition.

In response to the sale of indulgences in 1516 and 1517 by Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar and papal commissioner for indulgences, sent to Germany by the Roman Catholic Church to raise money to rebuild St Peter's Basilica in Rome, Martin Luther wrote to Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, protesting the sale of indulgences. He enclosed in his letter a copy of his "Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences." This later became known as The 95 Theses.

According to Philipp Melanchthon, writing in 1546, Luther nailed a copy of the 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on October—an event now seen as sparking the Protestant Reformation.  Church doors were the bulletin boards of Luther's time.

Some scholars have questioned the accuracy of Melanchthon's account, noting that no contemporaneous evidence exists for it. Others have countered that no such evidence is necessary, because this was the customary way of advertising an event on a university campus in Luther's day.

Two broadside editions of the 95 theses exist--one printed in Nuremberg, the other in Leipzig. There was also a 7-page quarto edition, of which a copy is preserved at Harvard College Library. No broadside appears to have been issued from Wittenberg, which suggests that the copy Luther posted on the Castle Church door was probably a manuscript. (Luther 1483-1983. An Exhibition at the Houghton Library, with a List of sixteenth-Century Luther Editions at Harvard [1983]).

"The 95 Theses were quickly translated from Latin into German, printed, and widely copied, making the controversy one of the first in history to be aided by the printing press." (Wikipedia article on Martin Luther, accessed 12-09-2008).

"The Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, in the Holy Roman Empire, where the Ninety-five Theses famously appeared, held one of Europe's largest collections of religious artifacts, or holy relics. These had been piously collected by Frederick III of Saxony. At that time pious veneration, or viewing, of relics was purported to allow the viewer to receive relief from temporal punishment for sins in purgatory. By 1509 Frederick had over 5,000 relics, purportedly 'including vials of the milk of the Virgin Mary, straw from the manger [of Jesus], and the body of one of the innocents massacred by King Herod.'

"The relics were kept in reliquaries and exhibited once a year for the faithful to venerate. "In 1509, each devout visitor who donated toward the preservation of the Castle Church received an indulgence of one hundred days per relic." This would allow the person relief of 100 days in purgatory, and thus hasten their entry into heaven. By 1520 Frederick had increased his collection to over 19,000 relics, allowing pilgrims viewing all of them to receive an indulgence that would reduce their time in purgatory by 5,209 years" (Wikipedia article  on The 95 Theses, accessed 12-09-2008).

Having obtained permission from both the Venetian Senate and the Pope to become the first publisher of Hebrew books in Venice, from 1519 to 1523 devout Christian Daniel van Bomberghen (Daniel Bomberg) issued the first complete printed edition of the approximately two million word Babylonian Talmud.

Over his 40 year career Bomberg issued 240 editions of books in Hebrew.

"Based on current knowledge of contemporary Venetian printing practices, we can safely speculate that each Bomberg edition of the Talmud was produced in print-runs of approximately 1500 copies, though of course most of them did not find their way into full sets. We do have evidence from a book catalog printed sometime between 1541 and 1543 that a complete set was available for purchase for the price of twenty-two Venetian ducats. This was at a time when one of Bomberg’s typesetters earned somewhere between 2½ and 3 ducats per month. Thus, even when first printed, these volumes were considered expensive and accessible to only the wealthiest of individuals."

"Bibliographers variously surmise that the Bomberg Talmud was normally bound in twelve or fifteen volumes in a standard order, though this is problematic. Among the fourteen known complete sets that survive as sets from the sixteenth-century, in addition to this set two others are bound in six volumes, one in eight volumes, three in nine, one in ten, one in seventeen, one in twenty-two, and only four sets are bound in twelve volumes. Even among those bound in twelve volumes, there is no standard ordering of the tractates in the various volumes" (Mintz & Goldstein, Printing the Talmud from Bomberg to Schottenstein [2005] No. 20).

Martin Luther published An den Christlichen Adel Deutscher Nation; von des Christlichen Standes Besserung (To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation). This and two other tracts he published in 1520—On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and On the Freedom of a Christian—became manifestos of the Reformation.

" 'To the Christian Nobility' was published in the middle of August 1520 and by the eighteenth of the month four thousand copies were sold; seventeen further editions were published in the sixteenth century. It was shortly followed by the two other revolutionary tracts: 'Concerning Christian Liberty' (on justification by faith alone) and 'On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church' (criticizing the sacramental system of the Church)" (Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man [1967] no. 49).

Architect and architectural theorist Cesare Cesariano, humanist Benedetto Giovio and and Bono Mauro da Bergamo edited the first edition in Italian of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio's De Architectura Libri Dece published on July 15, 1521 in Como, Italy at the press of Gottardo da Ponte. This was the first translation of Vitruvius into a modern language. The translation and commentary were largely the work of Cesare Cesariano, a pupil of Donato Bramante and Leonardo da Vinci; however, the address to the reader on leaf Z8r by Gallo and Aloisio Pirovano states that Cesariano left the work unfinished, and that it was completed by Giovio and Mauro. The edition may have been 1300 copies.

"Vitruvius' technical language is fraught with difficulties. Leone Battista Alberti was of the mind that the Latins thought Vitruvius was writing Greek and the Greeks, Latin. The impenetrable Latin and the lack of illustrations gave freedom to the Renaissance designers, who were able to interpret antique architecture in their own image, all' antica. Cesariano's Vitruvius gives us a clear picture of the Renaissance perception of the architecture of Classical Antiquity. Indeed the spirit of Milan's Late Gothic Duomo can be recognized in some of Cesariano's woodcuts. Among his illustrations is an attempt at rendering Vitruvius' precepts on the ideally proportioned man, successfully rendered by Leonardo, but attempted by many 15th century theorists" (Wikipedia article on Cesare Cesariano, accessed 01-21-2009).

This edition is known for its striking illustrations: "Some subjects follow the 1511 edition, but the execution is highly original and the illustration is much more detailed than that provided by Tacuino. . . . Blocks have black backgrounds and strong black lines. Aloisio Pirovano's `Oratio' to the people of Milan on leaf [-]8r refers to the collaboration of `molti excelle[n]ti pictori.' On leaves B6r, B7r, B7v are full-page plans and elevations of Milan cathedral. Cesariano's introduction of a gothic building into a classical text, apparently the first such illustration of gothic architecture, is typical of his individual approach to Vitruvius. . . . The influence of Leonardo on these illustrations has been generally noted" (Mortimer, Harvard College Library Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, 16th Century Italian Books, no. 544).

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 2158.

Between  August 9, 1537 and  August 9, 1538 Venetian printers Paganino and Alessandro Paganini produced the first printed edition of the Qur'an (Koran) in Arabic. The edition was probably intended for export to the Ottoman Empire.  For centuries this entire edition was thought to be lost, and the rumor was that the Pope had the complete print run burned.

Possibly the most daring and pioneering enterprise in sixteenth-century Venetian printing, this edition was mentioned by a handful of contemporary witnesses, and was reported as wholly destroyed as early as 1620. The reasons suggested for its destruction ranged from the sublime ("Pontifex Romanus exemplaria ad unum omnia impressa suppressit") to the ridiculous (divine intervention would prevent its printing), but without any copies to study, and without any reference in a bibliography or library catalogue, the mysterious edition was regarded as a ghost.  

In 1987 professor Angela Nuovo found a single copy in the library of the Franciscan Friars of Isola di San Michele, in Venice.

Nouvo, "A Lost Arabic Koran Rediscovered," The Library (1990) Sixth Series XII, No. 4, 273-292.

Henry VIII decreed that all new books printed in England must be approved by the Privy Council before publication.

This requirement remained in effect in some form until 1694.

Printer and publisher Robert Estienne issued from Paris Libri in officina Rob. Stephani partim nati, parti restituti & excusi. This was the first publisher's catalogue issued in book form, of which any copies survived.

"Estienne's publications are listed in alphabetical order, some under their authors, others under their titles; prices are added, but no dates given. The Paris printers, such as Estienne, Colines, Wechel, Chaudière, and Janot, pioneered this form of publisher's lists, and, between 1542 and 1550 issued more than a dozen of them, each surviving in only or or two copies" (Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development [1984] no. 13).

Swiss orientalist, publisher and linguist Theodore Bibliander (born Theodor Buchmann) contracted with Johannes Oporinus, classical philologist and scholar printer of Basel, Switzerland, to publish the first Latin translation of the Toledan Collection of works on Islamic doctrines and traditions, including the first Latin translation of the Qur'an (Koran).

The publication was instigated by Martin Luther who found a complete manuscript copy of the 12th century Latin translation of the Qur'an by Robert of Ketton in Wittenberg and turned it over to Bibliander for publication. "Printing was carried out speedily and under pressure, without the knowledge of the authorities, but news got out before work was completed. The edition was seized and the printer arrested. After lengthy negotiations involving reformers (Luther and Melanchthon included) and authorities in Zurich and Strasbourg, the city council of Basel released the work on condition that neither Basel nor Oporinus were mentioned on the title page, and that the edition should be sold from Wittenberg and provided with a preface by Luther" (Detlev Auvermann, Guillaume Postel (1510-1581), London: Bernard Quaritch, Catalogue 1343 [2006] no. 9).

Only some of the copies were issued from Wittenberg with Luther's two-page preface stating that the purpose of the work was to make Islamic texts available for study and refutation. Later issues without the preface were sold in Basel.

At the age of only 29, physician, surgeon, and anatomist Andreas Vesalius published De humani corporis fabrica libri septem in Basel,  revolutionizing the science and teaching of human anatomy. Throughout this encyclopedic 400,000 word book on the structure and workings of the human body Vesalius provided a fuller and more detailed description of human anatomy than any of his predecessors, correcting errors in the traditional anatomical teachings of Galen, which had been obtained from primate rather than human dissection, and arguing that knowledge of human anatomy was to be obtained only from human sources.  Even more revolutionary than his criticism of Galen and other medieval authorities was Vesalius's assertion that the dissection of cadavers must be performed by the physician himself-- a direct contradiction of the medieval doctrine that dissection was a task to be performed by menials while the physician lectured from the traditional authorities.  Only through actual dissection, Vesalius argued, could the physician learn human anatomy in sufficient detail to teach it accurately.  This "hands-on" principle remained Vesalius's most lasting contribution to the teaching of anatomy; it is graphically represented in the Fabrica's woodcut title page (the earliest illustration of an anatomical theatre), which shows Vesalius with his right hand plunged into an opened cadaver, conducting an anatomical demonstration. Because it was then legal only to dissect the cadavers of executed criminals, and these cadavers were always in short supply, Vesalius urged physicians to take their own initiative in obtaining material for dissection.  The Fabrica contains several amusing and unrepentant anecdotes of how students had robbed graves to obtain cadavers, especially those of women, since female criminals were rarely executed in those days.

The Fabrica also broke new ground in its unprecendented blending of scientific exposition, art and typography. Although earlier anatomical books, such as those by Berengario da Carpi had contained some notable anatomical illustrations, they had never appeared in such number or been executed in such minute precision as in the Fabrica, and they had usually been introduced rather haphazardly with little or no relationship to the text.  In contrast, Vesalius sent his woodblocks to the printer with precise instructions as to placement within the text, and with exact marginal references which brought about direct relationship of text to illustrations, or even details within illustrations.  The series of historiated initials, in which putti and dwarfed men humorously perform some of the more grisly actions associated with dissection, have been called pictorial footnotes to the text.  The book remains the typographic masterpiece of Johannes Oporinus of Basel, one of the most widely learned and iconoclastic of the scholar printers. Another advantage of using Oporinus for this project was that Oporinus had been educated in medicine; his success with the Fabrica apparently caused Vesalius to entrust to Oporinus all of his later publications. 

The Fabrica's magnificent title page and the spectacular series of hundreds of anatomical woodcuts (full-page and smaller) spread throughout the book remain the most famous series of anatomical illustrations ever published.  Although the illustrations were attributed traditionally to an associate of Titian, Jan Stephan von Calcar who drew and, possibly engraved, the three woodcuts of skeletons in Vesalius's first series of anatomical charts, Tabulae anatomicae sex (1538), there is no reliable basis for this attribution.  The Fabrica woodcuts were produced by an unknown artist or artists in Titian's workshop in Venice.  Vesalius commissioned the illustrations and supervised their production.  It is also quite possible that he personally drew some of the lesser illustrations for the Fabrica, as we know that he made the drawings for the first three of the Tabulae anatomicae sex.  The woodblocks for the Fabrica were preserved in Munich until their destruction in World War II.

A notable feature of the Fabrica not usually considered is Vesalius' "Index of Notable Subjects and Words" published at the end of the work. Arranged alphabetically by subject, and either by first name or surname somewhat inconsistently, this index to page number and line number on a given page amounts to a detailed outline of what Vesalius considered his significant original contributions.  For example, under Galen he indexed to each specific anatomical detail where he disagreed with Galen's writings.

♦ You can page through a digital facsimile of the 1543 Fabrica at the National Library of Medicine website at this link.

Shortly after publishing his encyclopedic De humani corporis fabrica libri septem, Andreas Vesalius issued De humani corporis fabrica epitome, also from the press of Johannes Oporinus of Basel. This thin set of 14 unnumbered leaves, each containing images and text, and published in large folio format even larger than the Fabrica, was an outline, or precis, or road-map of essential information contained in the Fabrica, including some different and spectacular larger images. This was the first time that the author of a revolutionary medical or scientific work issued a condensation of his essential information roughly simultaneously with the main publication.

Vesalius suggested that the large sheets of the Epitome might be mounted on the walls of dissection rooms as a guide to dissection. As a result, relatively few sets of the sheets were bound up as books, and only a small portion of the original printing survives.

While the Fabrica was a very expensive encyclopedic work, Vesalius' Epitome, though larger in format, was a much less expensive work that presented essential anatomical information in a concise, comparatively easy to understand manner. It became far more widely published and distributed than the Fabrica. By August 9,1543  Vesalius published a German translation of the Epitome in Basel, and many plagiarisms and adaptations of the Epitome were published in various European countries, in a wide variety of formats, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  Because of its much wider publication and distribution, even more than the Fabrica, Vesalius' Epitome was the publication that revolutionized the teaching and study of human anatomy.

The Epitome’s nine anatomical woodcuts are divided into two skeletal, four muscular and two circulatory charts, plus a neurological chart, each drawn with great attention to detail. The skeletal, muscular and one of the circulatory plates are similar, but not identical, to plates found in the Fabrica; the Epitome’s plates are larger, the figures in slightly different attitudes and less space is devoted to background scenery (leaf K1 duplicates the Fabrica’s celebrated thinking skeleton, but with the inscription on the pedestal changed). The remaining circulatory plate and the neurological plate are reproduced, with different text, on the two folding plates found in the Fabrica; the plate on M1 appears on leaf p4 of the Fabrica, and the plate on [N]1 (minus the accompanying organs) appears on the leaf m3. In addition to these nine anatomical plates, there are in the Epitome two stunning woodcuts of a nude male and nude female figure, accompanied by long descriptions of the surface regions of the body; nothing like them appears in the Fabrica. The Epitome’s title-page woodcut and portrait of Vesalius are from the same blocks used in the earlier work.

Most known copies of the Epitome are incomplete. According to the final paragraph of leaf M1, the work was issued in separate sheets and not intended to be bound together. The last two unsigned sheets (Cushing’s [N]1 and [O]1) are especially rare, as they were printed with individual parts of the body to be cut out and assembled into two figures, male and female.

Cushing, Bio-bibliography of Andreas Vesalius (1943) VI B-1.

French painter, sculptor, etcher, engraver, and geometrician, Jean Cousin the Elder, published Livre de perspective in Paris at the press of Jean Le Royer. The folio volume includes a woodcut title device, a frontispiece of platonic solids and 58 geometrical diagrams (16 full-page, 5 double-page) by Jean Le Royer and Aubin Olivier. The frontispiece of the platonic solids is one of the finest examples of mannerist book illustration.

“According to the printer’s introduction, leaf A3v, Le Royer received from Cousin the text and ‘les figures pour l’intelligence d’iceluy necessaries, portraittes de sa main sus planches de bois,’ and he himself cut most of Cousin’s blocks and completed others which his brother-in-law, Aubin Olivier, had started. Several of the diagrams are extended into landscapes with figures. . . . Le Royer held the title of king’s printer for mathematics. Cousin is known to have been a successful painter and designer of stained glass windows. . . . His considerable reputation as a designer of woodcuts for the Paris printers has been developed chiefly by comparison of details from this volume” (Mortimer, Harvard College Library Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, Catalogue of Books and Manuscripts Part I. French Sixteenth Century Books (1964) no. 157, quote from pp. 195-97). 

Physician, naturalist, and bibliographer, Conrad Gessner (Gesner) issued his Prologomena in Galenum, in tres partes divisa in volume one of Cl [audius] Galeni Pergameni [Opera] Omnia, quae extant, in Latinum sermonem convers published in Basel by Hieronymus Froben and Nicolaus Episcopius. 

Gessner's work on the many and complicated writings of the second century CE physician, Galen of Pergamon, was the first bio-bibliography, and Gessner's most developed bibliography, covering Greek editions, Latin editions, lost works, writers on Galen, and a classified bibliography of Galen's writings. The bio-bibliography occupies 37 unnumbered leaves, following the title to volume 1, and Gesner's two unnumbered leaves of dedication, dated February 1562. (α†^4-6,β†⁶, γ†⁶, A†-C†⁶, D†⁴).

Besterman, Beginnings of Systematic Bibliography 2nd ed (1940) 19-20, no. XXIX.

Georg Willer, a bookseller in Augsburg, issued the first catalogue of the Frankfurt Book Fair. This was the first comprehensive book catalogue issued in Germany. The quarto pamphlet of 10 leaves listed 256 books under the title of Novorum Librorum quos Nundinae Atumnales, Francoforti Anno 1564 celebratae, Venales Exhibuerent.

"The catalogues of the Frankfurt Book Fair, initiated by the Augsburg bookseller George Willer in 1564, represent the first international bibliographies of a periodic character, attempting to list every six months all new publications issued in Europe, and they can be considered the prototype of today's Books in Print. The books are arranged by subject; for the first time, place, publisher, and date are always mentioned" (Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development [1984] no. 24). 

Breslauer and Folter noted that in 1984 there was no copy of the first edition of Willer's catalogue in the United States.

Italian goldsmith, sculptor, painter, soldier and musician Benvenuto Cellini published Due Trattati, uno Intorno alle Otto Principali Arte dell'Oreficieria. L'Altro in Materia  dell'Arte della Scultura. . . . in Florence.

Cellini is remembered chiefly for the autobiography that he dictated to an amanuensis between 1558 and 1562, but which remained unpublished until 1728. The only work which Cellini published during his lifetime was the Due Trattati. One of the few original treatises on Renaissance artistic techniques, it describes Cellini's methods in a way analogous to Leonardo da Vinci's Trattato della Pittura (1561), but unlike Leonardo's work, which was compiled posthumously from various manuscripts by Leonardo, Cellini dictated his treatise himself. 

In October 1898 Cellini's book was issued in English translation by English entrepreneur and designer Charles Robert Ashbee from Cellini's original manuscript in the Bibliotheca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, rather than from the 1568 edition, which was abridged, as The Treatises of Benventuo Cellini on Goldsmithing and Sculpture. Ashbee was also the founder of the Guild & School of Handicraft, much of the efforts of which were in jewelry, coppersmithing and ironwork. 600 copies were printed by Ashbee's Essex House Press by printers from William Morris's then defunct Kelmscott Press, using the original Kelmscott presses, type, and handmade paper. However, the edition contained finely engraved photo-realistic illustrations, and its format, style and cloth binding was distinctly Essex House rather than Kelmscott.

Between 1569 and 1570 French painter, engraver and architect Jean Perrissin, French printmaker Jacques Tortorel, and French printmaker Jacques Le Challeux — all Protestants (Huguenots) who had fled to Geneva to escape religious persecution in France— issued from Geneva an album of prints entitled Premier volume. Contentant quarante tableaux ou histoire diverse qui son memorables touchant les guerres, massacres & troubles advenus en France en ces dernieres annees. Le tout receuilli selon le tesmoignage de ceux qui y on esté en personne, & qui les on veus, lesquels son pourtrais à la verité. (First Volume, Containing Forty Tableaux or Diverse Memorable Histories Concerning the Wars, Massacres and Troubles that have Occurred in France in These Last Years. All Gathered from the Testimony of Those Who Were There in Person and Saw Them, and Truly Portrayed.) The images, of which some were copperplate engravings and some of which were woodcuts, consisted of the elaborate engraved title page and thirty-nine images, each measuring roughly 32 x 50 cm, depicting significant "wars, massacres, and troubles" in the French Wars of Religion between 1559 and 1570.

Remarkably the contract for this project between Perrissin, Le Challeux and the Geneva publishers Nicolas Castellin and Pierre le Vignon, drawn by the Genevan notary Aimé Santeur and signed on April 18, 1569, remains preserved in the archives of Geneva.

Typically attributed to Perrissin and Tortorel, as they were the artists who signed most of the plates, this work was:

"the first extended print series offering a pictorial account of recent events where the images do not simply illustrate a written history but carry the burden of telling the story themselves, and that was intended not to glorify a ruler's deeds but to show a broad general public the events of their time" (Philip Benedict, Graphic History. The Wars, Massacres and Troubles of Tortorel and Perrissin [2007] 4).

"Like so many works in this century when printing was still new and the Renaissance and Reformation were destabilizing old cultural forms and encouraging new ones, the Quarante Tableaux was an experimental work. It was experimental in the sense that it was produced by a group of artists and entrepreneurs with no prior experience in producing such a work. It was experimental in the more profound sense that no exact generic precedents could guide the series. Some earlier graphic works had sought to carry a historical narrative through pictures and accompanying text, but these were typically accounts of the victories of a great ruler, containing a strong element of panegyric. In proclaiming their goal to be the presentation of an impartial eyewitness view of the events in question, the makers of the Quarante Tableaux took this emerging genre in a new direciton, one inspired by both the growing market for single-sheet news prints that claimed to offer true portraits of individual events, and the prevailing rhetoric of written historiography in Geneva. . . The manner in which the creators of the series chose to relate printed text to image further heightened this indeterminacy or open-ended-ness. Reliance on Protestant networks of information recurrently subverted the creators' proclaimed goal of offering an impartial view of events, yet they used multiple informants and made a clear effort to transcend a purely partisan or one-sided view of events. The end result was a complex, even internally contradictory work that invited different forms of appropriation" (Benedict 10-11).

"The episodes depicted in the volume run from the special meeting of the Parlement of Paris in June 1559 at which Anne Du Bourg spoke out before Henry II against the harsh repression of Protestanism through a minor skirmish betwwen Huguenot and Catholic forces along the Rhône in March 1570. The first dozen or so plates show the events that led up to the outbreak of open civil war in spring 1562. The remainder of the series is composed of events from the first three French Wars of Religion (1562-1563, 1567-1568, 1578-70). Above all it is a compendium of battles (15 pictures), sieges (5 pictures, raids (4 pictures) and massacres (3 pictures-5 if the massacres prior to the outbreak of the First Civil War are included)" (Benedict 6).

Benedict reproduces all the images in fold out plates with commentaries on each image on facing pages so that the commentary may be studied with the image. In an appendix he also reproduces the original publishing contract for the work.  Through records of the quantity of paper that the publisher Castellin purchased during the printing Benedict shows that the work was a commercial success, and he traces different states of several of the prints with texts in different languages. Whether a second volume was planned remains unknown, though indication of "Premier volume" on the title page would imply as much. Unfortunately, any such project was definitively cut short by an outbreak of plague in Geneva in 1571, which killed three of Pierre Le Vignon's four children, and also killed Castellin and his three children.  Prior to that outbreak the artists Perrissin, Tortorel and Le Challeux had returned to France in 1570 once the Peace of Saint-Germain ended the civil war, and retored rights of worship in France.

Kunzel, The Early Comic Strip. Narrative Strips and Picture Stories in the European Broadsheet from c. 1450 to 1825 (1973) 40.

Eliezer ben Isaac Ashkenazi, a printer from Prague, settled in Safad (Safed) (now northern Israel). The first book that he issued there was Lekah Tov, a Hebrew commentary on the Book of Esther, by Yom Tov Zahalon. 

This was the first book printed in the Middle East. In his introduction Zahalon expressed his delight in the founding of a press in this Holy City of the Holy Land and urged authors to have their works printed there; however the press issued only six books.

The Star Chamber issued a decree consolidating and amplifying the regulation of printing in England.

Johann Carolus, who previously earned his living by producing hand-written news sheets for wealthy subscribers, acquired a printing press and published the first European newspaper called Relation, in Strasbourg.

The earliest extant examples of Relation are dated 1609. In that year Heinrich Julius, duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, founded Avisa Relation oder Zeitung.

Printer Hieronymus Hornschuch published at Leipzig the first editor's and printer's manual, Orthotypographia, which "while dealing mainly with the signs and symbols of correction, included short sections on schemes of imposition and type-specimens" (P.Gaskell, G.Barber and G.Warrilow, 'An Annotated List of Printers' Manuals to 1850', Journal of the Printing Historical Society, no. 4  [1968] 11-31, G1). 

Prior to this date no printer had published instructions any technical aspect of the printing trade—a trade which had to be learned through a presumably secretive process of apprenticeship.

Reference: Orthotypographia, by Hieronymus Hornschuch A Facsimile with a Parallel Translation of the Earliest Printers Manual, First Published at Leipzig in 1608, edited by Philip Gaskell and Patricia Bradford. Cambridge: Cambridge University Library, 1972.

The Companie of Stationers in London published Robert Triplet's Writing Tables with a Kalendar for XXXIII Yeeres.

In May 2011 it was my pleasure to see the unique recorded copy of this ephemeral publication at an exhibit on diaries at the Morgan Library & Museum. Their exhibition note card read as follows:

"This rare copy of a renaissance portable calendar—a precursor to the pocket diary—includes blank pages that were specially treated with a coating of gesso and glue. Notes could be made on the go with a simple silverpoint stylus (no clunky pen and ink required!) and later wiped away. On the printed page shown, instructions are provided for erasing and rewriting: 'Take a little peece of spunge on a Linnecloath, being cleane without any soyle: wet it in water' and 'wipe that you have written very lightly and it will out, and within one quarter of a hower you may write in the same place againe.' "

ESTC System No. 006200615; ESTC Citation No. S95932. STC (2nd ed) 26050.8.  

ESTC System No. 006200616 cites a unique recorded copy of one presumably earlier, but undated edition of this, at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, for which the estimated date is 1602.

Curiously, when I wrote this note in May 2011 the ESTC missed the point of the gesso and glued blank pages describing them in both records as "Includes chalked and sized pieces of board the size of the book’s leaves, apparently intended to offer a firm surface upon which to write. Not included in pagination or signatures."

English publisher and "procurer of manuscripts" Thomas Thorpe issued from London, without the author's permission, Shake-Speare's Sonnets. 

The volume contained 152 previously unpublished sonnets, and two (numbers 138 and 144) that had previously been published in a 1599 miscellany entitled The Passionate Pilgrim. This earlier collection, falsely attributed in its entirety to Shakespeare, had been published by William Jaggard, who would later, in 1623, publish the so-called "First Folio" of Shakespeare's plays.

Thorpe's "apparent disregard for Shakespeare's permission earned him a poor reputation, although modern author Katherine Duncan-Jones has argued that he was not such a 'scoundrel' as he was portrayed, and the amiable and admirable [Edward] Blount would certainly not associate with him if he were a scoundrel. It has even been suggested that Shakespeare did sell his manuscript to Thorpe, because of his acquaintance with [Ben] Jonson as an actor in Sejanus, who may have recommended Thorpe to him as a good publisher. The dedication, which is addressed to a mysterious Mr. W.H., may have been written either by Shakespeare himself or by Thorpe. Popular belief, however, is that Shakespeare is the author of the dedication, but the identity of Mr. W.H. is not known. Thorpe was probably responsible for the arrangement of the sonnets, with 1-17 being the "procreation sonnets", 18-126 being love sonnets to the Fair Youth (for the most part), and 127-154 being written on a variety of subjects, including politics, sex, and the Dark Lady. Critics have failed to agree whether or not his arrangement was the most apt, but most detect a logical coherence in the order, which is generally retained today: (Wikipedia article on Thomas Thorpe, accessed 05-21-2009).

Corante: or, Newes from Italy, Germany, Hungarie, Spaine and France was published by the printer Nathaniel Butter in London. The earliest of the seven surviving copies is dated September 24, 1621, but it is thought that this single page news sheet began publication earlier in 1621.

Corante was the first private newspaper published in English. As a result of a 1586 edict from the Star Chamber, it carried no news about England.

English scholar and vicar Robert Burton published at Oxford The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Medicinally, Historically, Opened and Cut Up.

This work remains as much a classic of English literature and a profound study of the human condition as it remains a classic of psychiatric literature.

"He wrote The Anatomy of Melancholy largely to write himself out of being a lifelong sufferer from depression. As he described his condition in the preface 'Democritus Junior to the Reader,'

" 'for I had gravidum cor, foetum caput [a heavy heart, hatchling in my head], a kind of imposthume in my head, which I was very desirous to be unladen of.'

"Therefore, the treatise itself was intended as treatment. Again, from the preface:

" 'I write of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy. There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness, no better cure than business.'

"However, this sentence may also be interpreted ironically, as Burton is citing a well-known adage of the time. Indeed, the entire preface is quite satirical in nature — at one point Burton pretends to warn melancholy people to avoid his book for fear of exacerbating their symptoms:

" 'Yet one caution let me give by the way to my present or future reader, who is actually melancholy, that he read not the symptoms or prognostics in the following tract, lest by applying that which he reads to himself, aggravating, appropriating things generally spoken to his own person (as melancholy men for the most part do), he trouble or hurt himself, and get in conclusion more harm than good.'

"The parenthetical aside is delightfully tongue-in-cheek. The work, published under the pseudonym Democritus Junior in 1621, was quite popular. In the words of Thomas Warton:

'the author's variety of learning, his quotations from rare and curious books, his pedantry sparkling with rude wit and shapeless elegance ... have rendered it a repertory of amusement and information'.

"Later authors sometimes drew from the work without acknowledgment (such accusations were leveled at Laurence Sterne's book Tristram Shandy). Samuel Johnson considered it one of his favorite books. (He said of it that it 'was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise'.) [Boswell, Life of Johnson]" (Wikipedia article on The Anatomy of Melancholy, accessed 12-26-2009).

From the medical standpoint the work has been characterized as the first psychiatric encyclopedia, since Burton cited nearly 500 medical authors in the course of classifying the myriad causes, forms and symptoms of depression, and describing its various cures. The work is also a literary tour-de-force in the tradition of Renaissance paradoxical literature.

Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 120. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 381.

Burton put the work through five expanded editions during his lifetime. The third edition of 1638 contained an elaborate engraved title containing ten vignette illustrations.

Nathaniel Butter of London published the first edition of a periodical variously called News from Most Parts of Christendom or Weekly News from Italy, Germany, Hungaria, Bohemia, the Palatinate, France and the Low Countries. "From its miscellaneous contents and periodicity of production, it is regarded as the true forerunner of the English newspaper." Because the Stuart regime discouraged domestic reporting, it contained no news about England.

Nathaniel Butter and Nicholas Bourne published in London Certain News of the Present Week, or the Weekly News. This was the first regularly printed English newspaper with numbered issues.

Wlliam Harvey's Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus was published in Frankfurt in 1628. In this work Harvey presented the discovery and experimental proof of the circulation of the blood. Since antiquity, ideas about the physiology and pathology of most parts of the body had been based to an important degree on assumptions made about the function of the heart and blood vessels. In fundamentally changing the conception of these functions, Harvey pointed the way to reform of all of physiology and medicine.

Why Harvey chose a European publisher for his book has long provoked speculation— the most plausible conjecture is that Harvey wanted his book published on the Continent so that it would more easily gain international distribution and acceptance. His choice of the Frankfurt publisher William Fitzer seems to have arisen from his long acquaintance with Robert Fludd, whose books were then being published by Fitzer.

The physical distance between Harvey and his publisher seems to have precluded Harvey from correcting proofs, as he was compelled to issue an errata leaf with no less than 126 corrections. Since very few copies of De motu cordis include this errata leaf, it has been argued that it was probably added after a large portion of the edition had already been sold. Even so, Harvey's errata list must have been compiled with some haste, as the Latin text edited by Akenside for the College of Physicians in 1766 contains 246 emendations. Fitzer had Harvey's book printed on paper of poor quality, which has deteriorated in virtually all surviving copies. The first edition must have been relatively small since only about 68 copies have survived, nearly all in institutions.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine, (1991) no. 1006.

French physician, philanthropist and journalist, Théophraste Renaudot, with the support of Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu (Cardinal Richlieu), published the first issue of La Gazette, the first weekly magazine in France.

"Before the advent of the printed Gazette, reports on current events usually circulated as hand-written papers (nouvelles à la main). La Gazette quickly became the center of France for the dissemination of news, and thus an excellent means for controlling the flow of information in a highly centralized state. Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIII were frequent contributors."

"La Gazette had for objective to inform its readers on events from the noble court and abroad. It was mostly focused on political and diplomatic affairs. In 1762, its name became Gazette de France, with the sub title Organe officiel du Government royal (Official organ of the royal Government). In 1787, Charles-Joseph Panckouke already proprietary of the Mercure de France and the Moniteur universel — that he had just founded — rented the magazine.

"La Gazette remained silent about the birth of the revolution, and didn't even mention the storming of the Bastille on the 14th of July in 1789, limiting itself to government acts. For the satisfaction of his customers, Charles-Joseph Panckouke published a supplement, Le Gazettin (little Gazette), that gave its readers summaries of debates at the National Constituent Assembly. In 1791, the ministry of foreign affairs, who owned La Gazette, took it back. Nicolas Fallet was named director and it became a tribune for the Girondists. He was succeeded by Sébastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort. La Gazette became a daily magazine in 1792, 1 May. Following the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, 21 January, it was renamed Gazette nationale de France (National Gazette of France)" (Wikipedia article on La Gazette, accessed 07-31-2009).

French physician, philanthropist and journalist Théophraste Renaudot organized a series of weekly public conferences on diverse subjects, including science, called Conférences du Bureau d'Adresse. These were published by the Bureau d'Adresse as Questions traitées ès Conferences du Bureau d'Adresse (5 volumes, 1633-1641).

In 1630 Renaudot founded the Bureau d'Adresse in Paris.

"The Bureau was basically an employment agency combined with an outpatient clinic. Whoever registered there (for 0 to 3 sous, according to his means) received free medical treatment and help in finding jobs, cheap clothing, lodging, and furniture. The Bureau also granted its clients small-scale credits on security and helped them in their dealings with government offices and the law. It kept a card index of people looking for service or offering help. It also kept a current price index. Gradually it branched out into an advertising agency, a travel agency, a messenger service, a horse rental and shop where almost everything could be bought or hired: curios, antiques, domestic animals, houses, estates, geneologies, the services of private tutors, funerals. . . . The Bureau arranged marriages, recruited soldiers, found monks for understaffed monasteries and even planned to deal in academic degrees.

"This traffic in goods and services naturally also involved the traffic in information. With clients from all walks of life and through a network of correspondents the Bureau systematically collected news from home and abroad, which proved very valuable to the government. Indeed this was the main reason for the continuing protection which it received from Père Joseph and Cardinal Richelieu. They not only skimmed off its information, they also used it to influence public opinion. . . .

"Renaudot also made the Bureau into a centre of intellectual life. From 1633 on, he organized weekly 'conferences' in its rooms on the Ile de St. Louis. As in the earlier Renaissance academies, quaestiones were put up for discussion at these meetings which triggered the exchange of opinions, but were not decided by empirical research. . . In other respects these 'conferences' were looking towards the scientific societies of the second half of the 17th century; the discussions were held in the vernacular (French, not Latin); it was forbidden to quote 'authorities'; religious and political topics had to be avoided. Occasionally even experiments wer performed in order to demonstrate some point of discussion. In 1640 Renaudot set up a chemical laboratory. Yet his main interest was not pure science, but its humanitarian and pedagogic application. According to Renaudot's philanthropic principles, the 'conferences' were open to everybody who cared and consequently were not considered to be very prestigious among the intellectual élite" (Stagl, A History of Curiosity [1995] 136-37).

Renaudot's weekly conferences bear some comparison to those of the Invisible College, which preceded the Royal Society; however, they were attended by a considerably larger audience, were much closer to popular science in their orientation, and their speakers remained anonymous in the published reports.

The Conférences predate the Journal des sçavans and the Philosophical Transactions by 30 years. They were collected in book form rather than published as a periodical, and were published in English translation in 1664-65, just as the Royal Society was being formed.

During the reign of Charles I, the English Star Chamber court that sat at the Palace of Westminster issued a decree on July 11, 1637, making it a general offense to print, import, or sell "any seditious, scismaticall, or offensive Bookes or Pamphlets." The decree was published as a pamphlet from London by Robert Barker, "Printer to the King's most Excellent Maiestie: And by the Assignes of John Bill, entitled A Decree of Starre-Chamber, Concerning Printing, Made the eleuenth day of July last past. 1637.

The decree also forbade anything to be printed which had not first been licensed and entered in the Stationers' Register, a record book maintained by the Stationers' Company of London. The company had been given a royal charter in 1557 to regulate the various professions associated with the publishing industry, including printers, bookbinders, booksellers, and publishers in England. The Register itself allowed publishers to document their right to produce a particular printed work, and constituted an early form of copyright law. The Company's charter gave it the right to seize illicit editions and bar the publication of unlicensed books. The decree also stated that nothing could be reprinted without being re-licensed.  

The decree further stated that in all cases the full signed imprimatur was to be printed; the names of the printer and the author were to be printed as well. The decree also limited the number of master printers to twenty, and specifyied the number of presses, journeymen, and apprentices each could have. The decree also made it an offense to work for an unlicensed printer, or to operate an unlicensed press. 

In 1884 The Grolier Club issued a deluxe limited edition reprint of this decree as their first publication, printed by the De Vinne Press, New York. Eric Holzenberg, Publications of the Grolier Club 1884-2009 IN: For Jean Grolier and His Friends, No. P1,

Abolition of the Star Chamber court removed the machinery of censorship in England. This resulted in an outpouring of publications on topics which previously had been suppressed. 2000 titles were published in England in 1642, and 3500 in 1643-- "more titles in a single year than at any time before the eighteenth century" (A. Hessayon, "Incendiary texts: book burning in England, c.1640 – c.1660", Cromohs, 12 [2007] 1-25. http://www.cromohs.unifi.it/12_2007/hessayon_incendtexts.html, accessed 01-04-2010).

The first book printed on the island of Malta, preserved in a possibly unique copy in the Library of Congress, was I Natali delle Religiose Militie. . . by Comandatore Geronimo Marulli of Barletta, Italy. "Below the Order of St. John on the title-page, it bears the imprint: 'In Malta, l'anno MDCXXXXIII.' It has no printer's name, but in view of the fact that the title-page bears the arms of the Order of St. John it seems more likely to have been the work of Bonacota than that of Pompeo de Fiore. I. S. Mifsud, in his Bibliotheca Maltese writes: 'Il Marulli. . . nel 1633 aveva data alle stampe di Malta altra operetta initiola I Natali delle Religiose Miilizie'; but this was probably a misprint for 1643" (Clair, The Spread of Printing.  Eastern Hemisphere. Malta [1969] 8-11).

Having abolished the Star Chamber court which had provided the mechanism for censorship in England, the British government attempted to re-establish censorship through a Licensing Order passed on this date which would require the licensing of publications before printing.

In response to the British Government's attempt to re-establish censorship through the Licensing Order passed in 1643, John Milton published in London Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicense'd Printing, to the Parliament of England, arguing against the order for licensing books, and defending the freedom of the press.

"I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how Bookes demean themselves, as well as men, and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors: For Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whole progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragons teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. Yet on the other hand, unlesse warinesse be us'd, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth, but a good Book is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a life beyond life" (Milton, Areopagitica).

French Jesuit geographer, historian, and bibliographer Philippe Labbé issued Bibliotheca bibliothecarum curis secundis auctior accedit Bibliotheca Nummaria from Paris. This was the earliest bibliography of bibliographies.

"It is basically an alphabetical list, arranged by authors' first names, followed by eight intricate subject indices, among them one of publishers' and booksellers' catalogues. Appended is a very useful numismatic bibliography" (Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development [1984] no. 62).

French writer Denis de Sallo, Sieur de la Coudraye (pseudonym Sieur d'Hédonville) published from Paris the first issue of the first French literary and scientific journal, Journal des sçavans.

This was the earliest scientific journal published in Europe, predating Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London by three months.

"The journal ceased publication in 1792, during the French Revolution, and although it very briefly reappeared in 1797 under the updated title Journal des savants, it did not re-commence regular publication until 1816. From then on, the Journal des savants became more of a literary journal, and ceased to carry significant scientific material" (Wikipedia article on Journal des sçavans, accessed 07-31-2009).

The Journal des sçavans is available online in the Bibliothèque nationale de France Gallica digital library at this link: http://gallica.bnf.fr/Search?ArianeWireIndex=index&q=journal+des+scavans&p=1⟨=en.

Philosophical Transactions: Giving some Accompt of the Present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours of the Ingenious in Many Considerable Parts of the World began publication in London by the Royal Society.

Philosophical Transactions is the oldest continuously published journal of an academy of science.

On 1 March 1664/5, two years after the granting of its charter, the Royal Society authorized its second secretary, Henry Oldenburg, to publish at his own expense a monthly collection of scientific papers communicated to him either by members of the society or by foreign scientists. Although it was not the earliest scientific periodical, as  Journal des sçavans antedated it by three months,  Philosophical Transactions, with its long papers, book reviews and notices of work in progress, became the primary means of communication between English and Continental scientists, and served as a model for later periodicals issued by scientific academies.

"The first volumes of what is now the world's oldest scientific journal in continuous publication were very different from today's journal, but in essence it served the same function; namely to inform the Fellows of the Society and other interested readers of the latest scientific discoveries. As such, Philosophical Transactions established the important principles of scientific priority and peer review, which have become the central foundations of scientific journals ever since. In 1886, the breadth and scope of scientific discovery had increased to such an extent that it became necessary to divide the journal into two, Philosophical Transactions A and B, covering the physical sciences and the life sciences respectively" (http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/, where all issues of Philosophical Transactions are available online)

Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 148.

Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora published Libra astronomica. y philosophica in Mexico City. This may be the first scientific book written by a native Latin American published in the Western Hemisphere.

In 1690 Sigüenza y Góngora published Libra astronomica y philosophica also in Mexico City. This was the last word in a controversy between Sigüenza and the jesuit priest and astronomer Eusebio Kino over Sigüenza's scientific explanation of comets.

English hydrographer, printer, punch cutter, globe maker, and instrument maker Joseph Moxon published in London his Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing as part of his survey of the chief trades of his day. This was the first printing manual published in English, and the first comprehensive manual in any language published on printing—a trade that was passed down through apprenticeship, without truly useful printed manuals, since the mid-15th century.  

Moxon's Mechanick Exercises was intended to furnish his readers with basic instruction in all the chief trades of his day. Fourteen numbers, devoted to smithying, joining, carpentry and related arts, were issued between 1677 and 1680, before possible disappointment with sales, and the "breaking out of the [Popish] Plot"— which "took off the minds of my few customers from buying. . . ." (Moxon's "Advertisement," Vol. ii)— forced Moxon temporarily to cease production.  

¶ Volume 1 was the first book in England to be published in parts, or fascicules. Moxon resumed the series in 1683 with Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing, issued in twenty-four parts during 1683 and 1684. The general title page was issued with the first number in 1683, and bears that date in its imprint. The numbers were each two printed sheets (16pp., 4to) with one or more copperplate engravings, at 2d. per sheet and 2d. per plate. "Although 500 copies were printed, very few complete sets have been preserved, the work being, perhaps, the most difficult to obtain in the whole range of typographical literature" (Bigmore & Wyman, A Bibliography of Printing II (1880) 54). Bigmore & Wyman describe a second edition of 1693-1701, and a third edition of 1703, a portion of which they say is the "fourth edition." It is not unusual for sets of this very rare work to combine parts from different editions.

Moxon had worked for years as a master printer. He had also cut steel punches for letters, made moulds and matrices, and cast and sold type. In 1676 he published Regulae trium ordinum literarum typographicarum, or the rules of the three orders of print letters... Shewing how they are compounded of geometrick figures, and mostly made by rule and compass. Useful for writing masters, painters, carvers, masons, and others that are lovers of curiosity. (Bigmore & Wyman II, 56).  His type in that work were based on Dutch originals that he knew from experience in Holland.  

In the second volume of Mechanick Exercises  Moxon provided detailed technical accounts of the tools of the compositor and pressman, the art of typefounding, and the work of the compositor, corrector, pressman and other members of the printing trades as they had come down to his day. Most of these skills had not changed materially for nearly two hundred years, and would remain unaltered until the mechanization of printing in the nineteenth century. Moxon's manual "put into writing a knowledge that was wholly traditional" with such success that it was copied by virtually every writer of printing manuals and served as a standard text for over two hundred years.  

Moxon, Mechanick Exercises, edited by Davis and Carter [1962] vii ff.  

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1561.

In 1685 English physician and philosopher John Locke published "Méthode nouvelle de dresser des recueils" in Le Clerc's Bibliothèque universelle II (1685). This was translated into English in Le Clerc's Observations (London, 1697).  It was first published separately as A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books ; written by the late Learned Mr. John Lock, Author of the Essay concerning Humane Understanding. Translated from the French. To which is added Something from Monsieur Le Clerc, relating to the same Subject. A treatise necessary for all Gentlemen, especially Students of Divinity, Physick, and Law. There are also added two Letters, concerning a most useful method for instructing Persons that are Deaf and Dumb, or that Labour under an Impediments of Speech, to speak distinctly; written by the late Learned Dr. John Wallis. (London, 1706.) 

Locke began keeping commonplace books during his first year at Oxford in 1652.  On pp. [vi] and [1] of the 1706 edition we find a chart printed in red and black showing how he was able to create an expandable index of topics on two pages in each commonplace book. The index contained a line for every letter of the alphabet and for each letter there were sub-divisions based on the vowels a, e, i, o, and u. He described his method as follows:  

"When I meet with any thing worth putting into my Common-Place-Book, I presently look for a proper Head. Suppose for Example, the Head were Epistle;  I look in the Index the First Letter which the Vowel that follows, which in this Case E I. If there is found any Number in the Space marked E I, that shows me the space designed for Words which begin with E, and whose Vowel that immediately follows is I, I must refer to the Word Epistle in the Page what I have to take notice of, I write the Head in pretty large Letters, so that the principal Word is found in the Margin, and I continue the Line in writing on what I have to remark. I constantly observe this Method, that nought but the Head  appear in the Margin, and on on without carrying the Line again into the Margin. When one has thus preserv'd the margin clear, the Heads, present themselves at First Sight" (1706 edition p. 6).

Locke's method of indexing his notes was reflective of styles of reading and note-taking characteristic of his time.  According to a very widely quoted passage by Robert Darnton:

“Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end (unless they are digital natives and click through texts on machines), early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things, for the world was full of signs: you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your own personality. . . By selecting and arranging snippets from a limitless stock of literature, early modern Englishmen gave free play to a semi-conscious process of ordering experience. The elective affinities that bound their selection into patterns reveal an epistemology — a process of knowing — at work below the surface" (Darnton, “Extraordinary Commonplaces,” New York Review of Books 47 (20)[December 21, 2000] 82, 86).

Locke's method of indexing commonplace books remained widely used for at least one hundred years. Toward the end of the 18th century English publisher John Bell published notebooks entitled Bell’s Common-Place Book, Formed generally upon the Principles Recommended and Practised by Mr Locke.” These included eight pages of instructions on Locke’s indexing method, a system which not only made it easier to find passages, but also served the higher purpose of “facilitat[ing] reflexive thought.”

♦ Reflecting upon Robert Darnton's comment, perhaps my personal reading and writing style is more representative of the seventeenth century than the twentieth or twenty-first.  Throughout my career in the antiquarian book trade, which began in the 1960s, I found myself moving between subjects in the course of a day as I catalogued various books in stock, read about other books for sale, or discussed the different interests of clients.  With access to the Internet in the 1990s it was, of course, possible to follow-up more efficiently on diverse topics with Internet searches and hyperlinks.  The way that From Cave Paintings to the Internet is written, as a series of reading and research notes connected by links and indexed in a database, may be viewed to a certain extent as analogous to the method of maintaining and indexing commonplace books described by Locke. ♦

The first reading primer designed for the American colonies was The New- England Primer first issued in Boston, Massachusetts between 1687 and 1690 by English printer and publisher Benjamin Harris, who came to Boston, Massachusetts in 1687 to escape the brief Catholic ascendancy under James II. Harris based The New England Primer on a textbook which he had previously printed in England called The Protestant Tutor.  His New England Primer, with its heavily religious orientation, became the most successful textbook published in 18th century America, and the foundation of most early American schooling until it was replaced by Noah Webster's textbooks toward the end of the eighteenth century.

Schoolbooks were often read to death.  Remarkably the earliest surviving edition of Harris's New-England Primer was published in Boston by T. Kneeland & T. Green in 1727. This is known from a copy in the New York Public Library. Harris's supposed first edition of 1687-1690 is known from an advertisement for a second Harris edition of 1691 in Henry Newman's News from the Stars published in Boston, 1691, leaving the assumption that an edition had preceded it.  However, no copy of either edition survived.

Heartman, The New-England Primer Issued Prior to 1830. A Bibliographical Check-List. . . . (1934).

On September 25, 1690 English publisher Benjamin Harris, proprietor of the London Coffee House in Boston, Massachusetts published Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestic. This was the first newspaper issued in North America. The issue contained 4 pages, the last left blank for users to write in pieces of news to hand around with the newspaper.  

"It focused on local news, and included gossip; one item concerned King William's War and atrocities attributed to Native American forces allied to the British, current in September 1690. Without a license, it was closed down after a single issue, Harris was jailed, and the next newspaper did not appear until 1704, when John Campbell's Boston News-Letter was the first American newspaper to last beyond the first issue" (Wikipedia article on Benjamin Harrison (publisher), accessed 06-05-2012).

Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America, Vol. II,  333. Berry & Poole, Annals of Printing [1966] 139.

Lapse of the Printing Act in England ended pre-publication censorship in that country, stimulating the growth of newspapers and other publications.

English surgeon and anatomist William Cowper published The Anatomy of Humane Bodies. . . . This large folio volume included a mezzotint portrait of Cowper by Smith after Closterman, an allegorical engraved title attributed to Abraham Bloteling with pasted-on English title in cartouche, a second engraved title with vignette by Sturt, and 114 plates, of which 105 were designed by Gérard de Lairesse and probably engraved by Bloteling, and 9 plates mostly drawn and engraved by Michael van der Gucht. The volume was printed in Oxford at the Sheldonian Theatre and issued in London by Samuel Smith & Benjamin Walford.  From the format standpoint it is one of the largest volumes published in England during the seventeenth century.

Cowper's atlas was the first edition in English of the original anatomical plates designed for Govert Bidloo by Gérard de Lairesse, a painter who rivaled Rembrandt in popularity in his time. The plates were originally issued with Bidloo's Latin text and published in 1685. There was also an edition in Dutch in 1690. Bidloo’s text, however, was widely criticized, and perhaps because of this, or because sales were disappointing, Cowper, or his publisher, was able to obtain 300 sets of Bidloo's original plates from the publishers in Amsterdam. Cowper arranged to supply an entirely new text in English to accompany the reissue of the original engravings, with a few additions. Cowper also commissioned nine new plates. Cowper's new English text was clearly superior, and the basis for later Latin editions. However, Cowper did not acknowledge Bidloo, even going so far as to paste over Bidloo’s name with his own in the cartouche on the engraved allegorical title.

At this time neither copyright nor rights of authorship existed. The first copyright law passed was the British Statute of Anne in 1709. Without legal recourse, Bidloo chose to attack Cowper in print, resulting in a bitter plagiarism dispute between the two— one of the most famous in medical history. In 1700 Bidloo went so far as to publish his Gulielmus Cowper, criminalis literari citatus, coram tribunali, attacking Cowper in considerable detail. 

Russell, British Anatomy, no. 211.

Edward and Elizabeth Mallet began publishing the Daily Courant, England’s first daily newspaper. The Daily Courant continued publication for 30 years.

English clergyman and encyclopedist John Harris published Lexicon technicum: Or, an universal English dictionary of arts and sciences: Explaining not only the terms of art, but the arts themselves.

Harris's' work was the first English dictionary of arts and sciences, and the earliest modern encyclopedia of science. Harris was the first to make the distinction between “word-books” (dictionaries) and “subject-books (encyclopedias), and his Lexicon Technicum was the first English encyclopedia to be arranged in alphabetical order, as opposed to systematic order in the tradtion of the medieval encyclopedist, Isidore of Seville.

A clergyman educated at Oxford, Harris took an early interest in science, and was elected to the Royal Society in 1696. As a result, he had access to many of the greatest scientific minds in England, and the Lexicon technicum may be the first example of an encyclopedist relying directly on the consultation and help of experts or specialists, such as John Ray and Isaac Newton. In particular, Harris relied heavily on the writings of Isaac Newton as a source, quoting lengthy excerpts from them under such headings as “Attraction,” “Colour,” “Fluxions,” “Gravity,” “Light,” and “Motion.” The introduction to Vol. II contains the first printing (in Latin and English) of Newton’s “De natura acidorum,” his only published work on chemistry; and the articles “Quadrature” and “Curves” give the first English translations of the “Two treatises” from Newton’s Opticks.  

Babson, Newton Supplement, 55. Collison,Encyclopedias, 99. Horblit, One Hundred Books Famous in Science no. 25a. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine, no. 992. Printing and the Mind of Man no. 171a.

The Boston News-Letter began publication, edited and published by John Campbell, a bookseller and postmaster of Boston. This was the first “successful” newspaper in the North American colonies.

In 1709 British parliament enacted the Statute of Anne; short title: Copyright Act 1709 8 Anne c.21; long title: An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned. 

Named after Anne, Queen of Great Britain, this was the first copyright statute in the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the first full-fledged copyright statute in the world. It was enacted in the regnal year 1709 to 1710 and entered into force on April 10, 1710.  

The Statute of Anne granted publishers of books legal protection for 14 years with the commencement of the statute. It also granted 21 years of protection for any book already in print. At the expiration of the first 14 year copyright term the copyright re-vested in its author, if he or she were still alive, for a further term of 14 years.

"The statute determined that the 'copy' was the 'sole liberty of printing and reprinting' a book and this liberty could be infringed by any person who printed, reprinted or imported the book without consent. Those infringing copyright had to pay a fine of one penny for every sheet of the book, one moiety of which went to the author, the other to the Crown. In today’s terms this was a considerable fine. In addition the book in question was to be destroyed. Leaving in place the existing system of registration, the statute specified that action against infringement could only be brought if the title had been entered in the register at the Stationers' Company before publication. The formal requirements of registration enabled users to locate the owners of copyrighted works. The requirement for copies of published books to be deposited in university libraries ensured that there was public access to copyrighted works.

"Authors' rights

"The statute was the first to recognise the legal right of authorship, but it did not provide a coherent understanding of authorship or authors' rights. While the statute established the author as legal owner, and so providing the basis for the development of authors' copyright, it also provided a 21 year copyright term to books already in print. At the end of the 21 years granted by the statute the concept of literary property was still a booksellers' rather than an author' concern, as most authors continued to sell their works outright to booksellers. Given that the statute primarily intended to encourage public learning and to regulate the book trade, any benefits for authors in the statute were incidental. Throughout the 18th century, at the encouragement of the booksellers, rather than the authors, an understanding emerged that copyright originated in author's rights to the product of his labour. Thus it was argued that the primary purpose of copyright was to protect authors' rights, not the policy goal of encouraging public learning" (Wikipedia article on Statute of Anne, accessed 08-06-2011).

Johann Conrad Zeltner published Correctorum in typogaphiis eruditorum centuria speciminis loco collecta in Nuremberg at the press of A. J. Felsecker.

"Zeltner's bio-bibliography of 100 proofreaders and press correctors from the 15th to the beginning of the 18th century includes such luminaries as Henri I Estienne (and a history of his printing house), Michael Servetus, Josse Bade, Coverdale, G.A. Bussi (who worked for Sweynheim [Sweynheym] and Pannartz), Erasmus, Plantin, Isaac Casaubon, Oporinus, Paolo Manuzio, Rabii Jacob ben-Chajim or Hayyim (for Daniel Bomberg), and Thomas Crenius the bibliographer. Each entry contains a list of the press corrector’s published writings, some of the famous books on which he worked and citations to source material. Felsecker’s typesetters here committed over 400 errors (five page errata in 68 pt. type)" (Bruce McKittrick Rare Books, Short Stack Seven [2009] no. 4).

Bigmore & Wyman, A Bibliography of Printing (1880) III: 113. The work was reissued in Nuremberg in 1720 under the following title: Theatrum virorum eruditorum qui speciatim typophraphiis laudabilem operam preaestiterunt.

With the support of the Grand Vizier, Ibrahim Muteferrika addressed a petition to the Sultan of Constantinople in the form of an essay entitled Wasilat al-Tiba'a, (Vesiletu-t Tibaa) The Utility of Printing, in which he showed the losses to Islamic learning from the absence of print and the great benefits that printing would bring to Muslims in general and Ottomans in particular.

Convinced by Muteferrika's essay, Sultan Ahmet III issued a firman (ferman) authorizing Sait Efendi and Ibrahim Muteferrika to open a printing house for printing in Arabic type. The authorization was limited only for books on practical or secular subjects. This edict protected the more than 4,000 professional manuscript copyists of Constantinople, whose work consisted almost entirely of copying the Qur'an, the collections of Islamic canonical traditions, and legal texts.

Meteferrika's essay was translated into English by Christopher M. Murphy and published in Atiyeh (ed) The Book in the Islamic World. The Written Word and Communication in the Middle East (1995) 286-92.  The Firman of Ahmed III was also translated into English and published in Atiyeh's book on pp. 284-85. 

Mark Catesby published the Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands in London "Printed at the Expence of the AUTHOR: and Sold by W. INNYS and R. MANBY, at the West End of St. Paul's, by Mr. HAUKSBEE, at the Royal Society House, and by the AUTHOR, at Mr. BACON'S in Hoxton."

This splendid set of 2 folio volumes was the first natural history of North American flora and fauna, with 220 plates engraved by Catesby and colored under his supervision, systematically illustrating American birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and mammals for the first time. Catesby was the first to place his birds and animals in their natural habitats, a style of representation that would later be used by Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon. He was also the first to abandon the Native American names for his subjects, trying to establish scientific names based on generic relationships. Linnaeus would use Catesby’s work as the basis for his system of binomial nomenclature for American species in the tenth edition of Systema naturae (1758).

Having studied with the naturalist, John Ray, Catesby made his first trip to America to visit his sister who lived in Williamsburg, Virginia. He returned to England in 1719. On this visit Catesby became intrigued with the strangeness and variety of American plants, birds and animals, and decided to return again to the New World for another extended trip. For this second visit he acquired a number of sponsors for whom he was to collect and sketch botanical samples. Amongst his sponsors were William Sherard and Sir Hans Sloane. Catesby returned to America in 1722, settling in Charlestown, Carolina, and moving to Bermuda in 1725 as the guest of Governor Phenny. On this trip he collected  botanical samples for his sponsors, but he also sketched painted the birds, plants and animals that he saw on his wanderings throughout rural Southeastern America.

In 1726 Catesby returned to London and sought funding to produce and publish his researches by subscription.  “Catesby worked as a horticulturist first in the nursery of Thomas Fairchild, which passed to the hands Stephen Bacon in 1729, and then in Christopher Gray's nursery in Fulham. His work as a horticulturist and his reputation as an importer of exotic species helped him to generate subscribers for the Natural History as many of his clients read Catesby's work as an 'illustrated catalogue' of the exotic plants Catesby sold.

“Catesby's connections within the Royal Society proved indispensable in financing his American expedition, and they served him equally well in his publication of Natural History; Twenty-nine of his one hundred and fifty-four subscribers were members.Three individual members of the Royal Society were instrumental to producing and publishing the Natural History. Peter Collinson, a wealthy businessman with a keen interest in natural history, lent Catesby "considerable Sums of Money...without interest" and was the main financial supporter of Catesby's work. Sir Hans Sloane, by this time President of the Royal Society, continued to aid Catesby through his own financial support and by helping him enlist subscribers. For help with the Latin names of his subjects, Catesby turned to botanist William Sherard, who had been central in sending Catesby to America in the first place.

“Catesby wanted to send his watercolors to Paris or Amsterdam to be engraved for printing, but the cost was prohibitive. And so, by now in his mid-forties, the self-taught artist endeavored to learn etching. The print maker Joseph Goupy taught Catesby to etch his own plates. His lack of experience and expertise actually served as asset, freeing him to innovate. Instead of the traditional "Graver-like manner" he opted to ‘omit their method of cross-Hatching and to follow the humour of the Feathers, which is more laborious, and I hope has proved more to the purpose’. Each copy was then hand-coloured, though Catesby did have some assistance with this.

“As Catesby sorted through his paintings, deciding which to reproduce, he organized his materials into two volumes. The first hundred images of birds, frequently posed with the plants on which they feed or in which they dwell, would make up Volume I. Volume II was divided into sections treating fish, amphibians, mammals and insects, again, often with related plants. Volume II included plates treating only plants and ended with an appendix, which depicted some animals and plants Catesby was unable to see in person. As a preface to the second volume Catesby wrote a collection of essays discussing the geology, climate and peoples of "Carolina and the Bahama Islands."

“Each volume consists of five parts, each of which Catesby presented to the Royal Society upon completion. While the publication date on the title page of the first volume is 1731, he presented parts I-V between 1729 and 1732. Between 1734 and 1743 he presented parts VI-X, followed by the Appendix in 1747. Catesby sold the sections separately for two guineas a piece. A complete set, at twenty-two guineas, was one of the most expensive works of the 1700s. The order in which these sections of appear vary from copy to copy of the first edition as patrons had the works bound themselves. While Catesby's original proposal for publication stated that a smaller uncolored set would also be available for a single guinea a section, no known black and white copies exist” (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma02/amacker/etext/pre_3.htm, accessed 12-28-2008).

You may view all the images and captions from Catesby’s work at the website created by Kristy Amaker at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma02/amacker/etext/home.htm.

In 2007 The Catesby Commemorative Trust produced a beautiful film about Catesby's life and work entitled The Curious Mister Catesby which is available on DVD, and highly recommended. You can watch and listen to a snippet of the film and order it from their website.

Printer, editor, and publisher of St. John's Gate, London, Edward Cave founded The Gentleman's Magazine: or, Trader's monthly intelligencer in January, 1731.

A "repository of all things worth mentioning," this was the first general-interest periodical in the modern sense, and the first to use the word magazine to indicate a storehouse of knowledge. With its title reduced to The Gentleman's Magazine, the work continued publication uninterrupted until 1922. It was also the most important periodical of 18th century England, reflecting the diversity of Georgian life, politics and culture, and at the price of 6d per issue, it was an outstanding bargain. It covered current affairs, political opinion, lead articles from other journals, miscellaneous information such as quack cures and social gossip, prices of stocks, science and technological discoveries, notices of births, deaths, and marriages, ecclesiastical preferments, travel, parliamentary debates, and poetry. Writers such as Dr Johnson, John Hawkesworth, Richard Savage, and Anna Seward were just a few of the thousands who contributed to it.  Because the periodical covered such a wide range of topics, and continued uninterrupted for so long it became a kind of comprehensive reference on various aspects of culture.

"Prior to the founding of The Gentleman's Magazine, there had been specialized journals, but no such wide-ranging publication (though there had been attempts, such as The Gentleman's Journal, which was edited by Peter Motteux and ran from 1692 to 1694).

"Samuel Johnson's first regular employment as a writer was with The Gentleman's Magazine. During a time when parliamentary reporting was banned, Johnson regularly contributed parliamentary reports as 'Debates of the Senate of Magna Lilliputia'. Though they reflected the positions of the participants, the words of the debates were mostly Johnson's own" (Wikipedia article on The Gentleman's Magazine, accessed 03-07-2009).

London rare book dealer and publisher Thomas Osborne issued The British Librarian: Exhibiting a Compenious Review or Abstract of our most Scarce, Useful and Valuable Books in all Sciences as well in Manuscript as in Print.

The work, of which only six issues appeared from January to June 1737 (issued in a collected volume in 1738), was the first periodical published in English on rare books and manuscripts, and it may be the first periodical on these topics in any language, as the antiquarian book trade was beginning to become organized around this time, and the earliest recorded full-fledged rare book catalogue— as distinct from an auction catalogue— is also dated 1738.

The anonymous author of the periodical, William Oldys, included descriptions of unique manuscripts, of examples of early printing such as several works printed by William Caxton, and of other works which were considered rare and collectable at the time. He sometimes included details of bindings, and of private collections. While Oldys' descriptions lean toward the verbose, and there is a certain lack of analysis, the periodical provides valuable insight into how rare books were appreciated and marketed in the first half of the eighteenth century. It is especially helpful since, as Oldys remarks, booksellers' catalogues and library catalogues of this period were primarily listings, and almost never annotated.

William Oldys devoted his life to antiquarian and bibliographic pursuits, compiling valuable notes on Langbaine's Dramatick Poets (1691), writing an important "Life" of Sir Walter Raleigh (published in the 1736 edition of Raleigh's History of the World), and amassing a library of historical and political works. In 1731 Oldys sold his library to Edward Harley (1689-1741), second Earl of Oxford probably the greatest English collector of printed books and manuscripts of his time. From 1738 to 1741 Oldys served as the Earl's librarian, but had to give up the post upon his patron's death. In 1742 The Earl of Oxford's immense library of printed books was purchased by bookseller Thomas Osborne, publisher of The British Librarian and one of England's first rare book dealers. Osborne hired Oldys and Samuel Johnson to prepare a descriptive catalogue of the Harleian collection prior to its sale; the resulting Catalogus bibliothecae Harleianae was issued in four volumes plus a supplementary fifth volume of books from Osborne's stock, between 1743 and 1745. Oldys and Samuel Johnson also worked together on The Harleian Miscellany, an annotated reprint of selected tracts and pamphlets from the Harleian library edited by Oldys and Johnson and published by Osborne.

After the death of Harley ", . . Oldys worked for the booksellers. His habits were irregular, and in 1751 his debts drove him to the Fleet prison. After two years' imprisonment he was released through the kindness of friends who paid his debts, and in April 1755 he was appointed Norfolk Herald Extraordinary and then Norroy King of Arms by the Duke of Norfolk" (Wikipedia article on William Oldys, which derives material from the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica).

Benjamin Franklin was the first to conceive the idea of publishing a magazine in the American colonies.  However, Andrew Bradford's American Magazine, or Monthly View of the Political State of the British Colonies published in Boston beat Franklin to press by three days. Franklin's publication, issued in Philadelphia, was called The General Magazine, and Historical Chronicle for all the British Plantations in America. Bradford's magazine continued publication for three months; Franklin's for six months.

English writer, actress and publisher Eliza Haywood wrote The Female Spectator. This monthly periodicalpublished in London, written in answer to the contemporary London journal, The Spectator by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, was the first periodical written for women by a woman.

"Haywood anonymously published a monthly journal entitled The Female Spectator. It was the first magazine by and for women, and was extremely popular. It was a collection of essays that allegedly originate in letters from readers. The essays provide an ideal forum of disscussion which gave Haywood direct contact to her public and vise versa. Haywood concerned herself with how women might operate better in a society that held restrictions upon them. She knew the difficulties of female life within a patriarchal system, but she wrote to show how not to accept such difficulties as definitive of women's possibilities. Haywood's explicit recommendations  [were] to women urge them to work within the existing system, gain an education, and a strong sense of personal power.

"As Haywood began finding her authoral voice, she created the magazine as a product of four women. She created those women as voices that would relate to the public and help her reach her moral purpose of the magazine. First, was Mira, a lady descended from a family to which "wit" was hereditary . . . . She married a gentleman that was ever so deserving of a great wife, and together, they live in perfect harmony. Next, is a widow of quality, who is able to find innocence and honour in most situations. She was called the wise widow . . . . The third was the daughter of a wealthy merchant, charming, but endued with so many accomplishments, that to those who know her truly, her beauty is the least distinguished part of her . . . . The fourth was the "Female Spectator" herself . . . . Within the pages of The Female Spectator, gambling, lying, jilting, scandal bearing, and the like are discussed as they affect women. Current affairs, wars, and politics, were not a part of the magazine. Naturally, the focus was on women and their concerns, principally courtship and marriage" (http://www.umich.edu/~ece/student_projects/female_journalism/femalespectator.htm accessed 02-23-2009).

In 1744 printer and publisher John Newbery of London announced the availability of A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, intended for the Amusement of Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly with Two Letters from Jack the Giant Killer by M. F. Thwaite and John Newbery. The first edition appears to be known only from an advertisement in the Penny London Morning Advertiser published on June 18, 1744. If copies were issued at that time they appear to have been read out of existence.

This small book, of which very few copies of early editions survived, is generally considered the first book for children in the modern sense. It consists of simple rhymes for each of the letters of the alphabet. To market the book to the children of the day the book could be purchased alone for 6d., or with a ball (for boys) or a pincushion (for girls) at a cost of 8d. 

The book includes a woodcut of stoolball and a rhyme entitled "Base-Ball." This is the first known instance of the word baseball in print. In the book "Base-Ball" refers to the game Rounders, which had been played in England since Tudor times.

The book was very popular in England, and was first published in Colonial America in 1762. 

♦ A facsimile of the edition printed in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1787 by Isaiah Thomas is available the Library of Congress website. In 1966 Oxford University Press issued a facsimile of the earliest known complete copy of an edition— that of London, 1767, preserved in the British Library. The facsimile included an introductory essay and biibliography by M. F. Thwaite, and an index to the introduction and bibliography. Thwaite wrote in his introduction, p. 3:

"The world of the day probably had little idea that this small work was in any way notable, or that it marked a new era in literature for the young. But there was one word in the advertisement which might have struck them an unusual. It was a word which was to open up new realms to young minds. To avow 'amusement' as a principal end in a book for boys and girls indicated that a revolution had taken place. In the past children's books had been reluctant to admit this feature, but in this new century of reason it was to be demonstrated that pleasure should be an important element, even though still firmly leashed to the old purposes of morality and instuction. Newbery was therefore only expressing the new spirit abroad. Before 1700 books for the young had been dominated by religious teaching, moral lessons or scholastic purpose. Now amusement was to be an equally desirable aim. And no one in those formative years of children's book-making was to follow it so well or to carry it so far as John Newbery."

English writer on cookery, Hannah Glasse published The Art of Cookery. This work became one of the most widely read cookbooks in England and America for about 100 years.

"Hannah wrote mostly for domestic servants (the "lower sort", as she referred to them), writing in a conversational style familiar to anyone who has learned a recipe at the elbow of a parent or grandparent. The food is surprisingly recognizable, with staples such as Yorkshire pudding and gooseberry fool still known and eaten today, and there are even early traces of the Indian food that eventually became naturalized in the UK. She showed marked disapproval of French cooking styles and in general avoided French culinary terminology" (Wikipedia article on The Art of Cookery, accessed 06-07-2009).

"By the time Hannah Glasse published her first cookery book in 1747 the urban middle classes were almost universally literate and had cash to burn. They were also acutely aware that fortunes were easier to earn than respectability and social status. Prosperous merchants, lawyers, shopkeepers and tradesmen were desperate in the mid-18th Century to show off their new wealth and to establish themselves within society. Hannah Glasse gave them the ticket to social respectability by providing middle class women with a no-nonsense cookery books that gave them the ticket out of the kitchen and into a life of leisure. Even if the women of London’s burgeoning mercantile class could not quite replicate the life of leisure led by the gentry and nobility, they were now about to eat in the style of those much higher up the social scale. Hannah was providing a guide to life.

"Between 1700 and 1789 over 500,000 copies of some 300 cookery books were published. The vogue for complicated books published by men was completely overtaken by the simple approach pioneered by Glasse and many female contemporaries. The success of the Art of Cookery is testament not only to the aspirational desires of the middle classes and the increased purchasing power of women, but also to the fact that a much wider spectrum of British society was beginning to enjoy eating. Discarding the extravagance and pomp of court food and French culinary techniques saw British cooking get back to basics – good ingredients, simple techniques, and quality dining available for all" (Wikipedia article on Hannah Glass, accessed 06-07-2009).

René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur and Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau issued from Paris Descriptions des arts et métiers faites ou approuvées par Messieurs de l'Académie royale des Sciences, containing 72 works in 114 parts printed in folio format, with over 2100 engraved plates and plans.

This was the most important and the largest work on the mechanical and industrial arts of eighteenth century France, and one of the earliest projects of its kind undertaken in any country. Although encyclopedic in scope, the work was not conceived in parallel to Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, but in response to the perceived function of the Académie royale des Sciences. A statement was published in 1699 in Histoire, an organ of the Académie, that outlined the motives and aims behind a proposed Description des arts et métiers:

“When this work is completed, it will be easy for each craft to compare the practices in vogue in France with those pursued in other countries; and from this comparison, the French and the inhabitants of these foreign lands will profit equally” (quoted in Cole and Watts, p. 7).

Each article had sections on materials, tools and apparatus, processes and methods, and illustrations of the métier. The wide range of crafts and industries covered nearly every aspect of French industrial and artisan life: coal-mining, fishing, textile manufacture, carpentry and cabinet-making, masonry, glass-blowing, ceramics, candle- and soap-making, barbering and wig-making, papermaking and bookbinding, iron- and tinsmithing, among other fields. Although the work was very much a separate enterprise, the Arts et métiers inspired many articles in the Encyclopédie, and can be said to complement the latter work. Both were essential to any well-balanced library in France and abroad.

The two principal figures involved in the Arts et métiers were René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur  and Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau. The former was elected to the Académie at age 25, and had a prodigious output, submitting memoir after memoir on a variety of subjects, mostly relating to pure mathematics and pure science, but including his celebrated description of English steel production. Duhamel de Monceau, who succeeded Réaumur, was interested in applied sciences, in particular chemistry, botany and mechanics. Réaumur died before the first cahier of the Arts et métiers appeared, and Duhamel du Monceau assumed control of the project some time after Réaumur’s death in 1757. Other contributors included François Bedos de Celles, Fredrik Chapman, Charles Romme, Michel Ferdinand d’Albert d’Ailly, duc de Chaulnes, the Abbé Jean-Antoine Nollet, Jean-Jacques Perret, Charles-René Fourcroy de Ramecourt, August-Denis Fougeroux de Bondaroy, François-Alexandre Pierre de Garcault, Jérome le Français de Lalande, Jean Jacques Paulet, Jeanne-Marie Roland de la Platière, Nicolas Christien de Thy, comte de Milly (1728-84) and others. The Académie and the authors of the Arts et métiers sought help from men with practical experience whenever possible.

Though it was written by the elite rather than the artisan class, the combination of the best scientific minds and the best practical minds of the era produced an invaluable reference work and an unparalleled social record of the artisan classes, and recorded for posterity manufacturing methods that would soon disappear with the coming of the Industrial Revolution. Like Diderot’s Encyclopédie, the Arts et métiers is one of the greatest productions of the French Enlightenment, and a benchmark in social and scientific history.

Arthur H. Cole and George B. Watts, The Handicrafts of France as Recorded in the Description des Arts et Métiers (1952).

Between 1751 and 1780 French philosopher, art critic, and writer Denis Diderot and French mathematician, mechanician, physicist and philosopher Jean le Rond d'Alembert edited and wrote portions of the Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une société‚ de gens de lettres in 17 folio volumes of text plus 11 folio volumes (i.e., 10 volumes in 11) of plates. The first 7 volumes were published in Paris, but volumes 8 to 17 had to be published under a false Neuchâtel imprint. The main work appeared between 1751 and 1772. A supplement of 4 volumes plus one plate volume was published in Paris and Amsterdam from 1776 to 1777. The Table analytique et raisonnée for the set was published in 2 folio volumes in Paris and Amsterdam in 1780. Altogether there were 35 volumes, with 71,818 articles, and 3,129 plates.

The central enterprise of the French Enlightenment, the Encyclopédie embodied that movement's liberal, anti-clerical and scientific spirit, its preoccupation with man as a creature of nature, and its conception of culture and society as mutable products of the evolutionary processes of history. As such, the work challenged the twin authorities of the French monarchy and the Catholic Church, both of which derived their power from the traditional belief in a divinely ordained, unchanging order. Well aware of the dangers of affronting such powerful authorities, the philosophes who contributed to the Encyclopédie relied heavily on irony and subterfuge in their attacks on the established order, but the epistemological basis of these attacks was clearly stated in the Encyclopédie's "Discourse préliminaire," written by d'Alembert, who, "although he formally acknowledged the authority of the church, . . . made it clear that knowledge came from the senses and not from Rome or Revelation" (Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie 1775-1800 [1979] 7).

"The Encyclopédie was an innovative encyclopedia in several respects. Among other things, it was the first encyclopedia to include contributions from many named contributors, and it was the first general encyclopedia to lavish attention on the mechanical arts. Still, the Encyclopédie is famous above all for representing the thought of the Enlightenment. According to Denis Diderot in the article 'Encyclopédie,' the Encyclopédie's aim was 'to change the way people think.' "(Wikipedia article on Encyclopédie, accessed 01-26-2010).

The first seven volumes of the Encyclopédie were produced in relative safety, due in part to the support of powerful protectors, notably Madame de Pompadour, but official tolerance came to an end in 1759, when the Encyclopédie was condemned by the Parlement of Paris and placed on the Index librorum prohibitorum by Pope Clement XIII. Diderot was forced to complete the remaining ten volumes in secret and to publish them under a false Neuchâtel imprint.  "In truth, secular authorities did not want to disrupt the commercial enterprise, which employed hundreds of people. To appease the church and other enemies of the project, the authorities had officially banned the enterprise, but they turned a blind eye to its continued existence" (Wikipedia).

A high percentage of the Encyclopédie's 71,818 articles were written by Diderot and d'Alembert themselves, with another large portion, about 400 articles, written by the Baron d'Holbach. Other famous contributors included Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. The most prolific contributor was the French scholar Louis de Jaucourt who wrote 17,266 articles, or about 8 per day between 1759 and 1765.   

The Encyclopédie was a considerable commercial success, resulting in a print run of 4250 copies (Wikipedia), much larger than the typical print run of most publications at the time.

The account of printing in the Encyclopédie is among the most significant of the 18th century. Of this Giles Barber wrote in French Letterpress Printing (1969)9-10:

"The Encyclopédie provides one of the best general explanations of printing of the century, being both detailed and accurate. The main article is well supported by a host of minor ones including numerous definitions of terms and processes and by an excellent and evocative series of plates showing general workshop scenes as well as details of presses and other equipment. The authorship of all these articles is not, as yet ascertained. In their Preface the editors say: 'On juge bien que sur ce qui concerne l'Imprimerie et la Librairie, les memes tous les secours qui'il nos était possible de désirer'. In addition two of the publishers are credited with particular articles, David l'ainé with 'catalogue" (based on a manuscript by the abbé Girard bequeathed to Le Breton) and Le Breton himself with 'encre noire'. The technical part of the long and important article on 'imprimerie' is ascribed to the prote in Le Breton's shop, who we learn from the article 'prote', also ascribed to him, was one Brullé. J.B.M. Paillon, the famous engraver, wrote a number of minor articles on engraving ('dentelle, dorure sur parchemen, fleuron') and provided notes for others. Pierre Simon Fournier, the type founder, is similarly thanked in the Préface for providing background notes on his trade. "Papeterie' is by L. J. Goussier, one of the regular contributors, assisted by 'M. Prevost de Langlée près de Montargis'.

"Of the chief editors we know that d'Alembert wrote 'bibliomanie' and that Diderot's editorial asterisk, indicating his responsibility for either part or all of the article, occurs before 'bibliothécaire', caractère de'imprimerie (doubtless basically written by Fournier), chassis, corps, correcteur' and a few other minor subjects. But the chief editor as far as printing was concerned was undoubtedly the Protestant chevalier Louis de Jaucourt. Among his more important contributions were parts of 'imprimerie' covering 'histoire des inventions modernes' and 'imprimerie de Contantinople', the historical part of 'papier' and the articles on 'privilege d'impression' and 'relieur' as well as a large number of short ones.  It has also bee suggested the printer Claude François Simon wrote many of the printing articles but no internal confirmation of this has been found."

♦ Charles C. Gillespie reproduced 485 of the most notable plates in the Encyclopédie with informative and entertaining commentary in A Diderot Pictorial Encylopedia of Trades and Industry (2 vols. 1959).  These included all or most of the plates concerning book production (papermaking, printing, copperplate engraving, bookbinding, leather production).

♦ Lough, Essays on the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert (1968) provided an authoritative bibliographical study and identified the authors of a significant percentage of the unsigned articles. 

Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 200.  Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 637.

♦ There are numerous versions of the Encyclopédie online. The ARTFL Encyclopédie Database from the University of Chicago contains "20.8 million words, 400,000 unique forms, 18,000 pages of text, 17 volumes of articles, and 11 volumes of plate legends." There is also the Encyclopedia of Diderot and d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project at the University of Michigan. The entire searchable French text and all the illustrations are available at http://diderot.alembert.free.fr/ (accessed 04-21-2010).

There is also http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Diderot_-_Encyclopedie_1ere_edition_tome_11.djvu/842. When I searched this in March 2011 for Prevost de Langlée près de Montargis the French text was robotically translated into English by Google Chrome.

The first book, part of which was printed on wove paper (velin) invented by English papermaker James Whatman, was the edition of Virgil's Bucolica, Georgica et Aeneis printed in Birmingham, England by writing master, typographer and printer John Baskerville. The edition was advertised for sale in the London Press on May 5, 1757. Because Whatman could supply only enough wove paper for part of the edition,

"the first 28 sheets (A-2E) were printed on an unwatermarked wove paper, the remainder (2F-3H, Π-b) on an unwatermarked laid paper. At some time after the change from wove to laid paper a number of sheets and individual leaves were cancelled, those in the wove sections being identifiable through the cancellantia being printed on laid paper. Some of these cancels are found in nearly all copies of the book, some in only a few" (Gaskell, John Baskerville: A Bibliography [1959] no. 1).

The wove paper Whatman produced for this edition was a preliminary form:

"Apropos of the claim . . . that Baskerville's quarto Virgil of 1757 is printed on the first known specimen of western wove paper, it can be said without hesitation that the characteristics of this paper are unique. It is quite unlike the more successful wove papers that followed in having unmistakable wiremarks and flaws" (Balston, The Whatmans and Wove (Velin) Paper [1998] xxxv). 

Baskerville's Virgil of 1757 was his first publication, a project which he began in 1754, after he had made a fortune manufacturing japanned goods. Some authorities consider it Baskervile's finest work. The edition became famous for its typography, and overall design. 

"In this Virgil, his first book, the 'amateur' Baskerville shows an assurance one would have expected from a highly experienced master . . . His use of his own, freshly created type, with its balance between the subtlety of the earlier printers' designs and the harsh new French types, is exemplary. . . The skill seen here is especially remarkable, for such simplicity, even minimalism, was revolutionary. It was a defining moment in bookmaking, ridding it of the irrelevant, flowery decoration . . . The repercussions were to be felt not only in Britain, but in continental Europe, and even in America." (Bartram, Five Hundred Years of Book Design, 70-71).

Though book historians draw attention to the first use of wove paper in the first Baskerville edition of Virgil, there is no evidence that Baskerville was especially interested in this innovation in paper. Most of his later book were printed on the traditional laid paper.  Besides the innovative typography and book design involved, Baskerville's first edition of Virgil was also known for the "glazed" surface of the paper. The exact method by which Baskerville glazed or hot-pressed his book-paper was a trade secret that Baskerville never revealed. As a result, extensive research by historians of printing and paper has been devoted to possible techniques involved; see Balston, op. cit (1998) 27-28, 217-224.

Eventually after the first edition of his 1757 4to Virgil was sold out, Baskerville published a second edition, produced in facsimile to the first. The precise date of this second edition, called by some a "forgery," is unknown, but it has been estimated to be around 1770. Among the ways it can be distinguished from the first edition is that is printed entirely on laid rather than wove paper. Determining the original printing from the early facsimile edition also requires attention to subtle bibliographical details cited in Gaskell's bibliography referenced above.

Pardoe, John Baskerville of Birmingham, Letter-Founder & Printer (1975).

In 1759 French philosophe François-Marie Arouet, who wrote under the pen name Voltaire, pseudonymously published the satirical novella Candide, ou l'Optimisme, traduit de l‟Allemand de Mr. le Docteur Ralph secretly in Geneva, Switzerland, first at the press of printer and bookseller Gabriel Cramer. Probably within days editions were also published in Paris, Amsterdam, London and Brussels.

Immediately after its secretive publication, the book was widely banned because it contained religious blasphemy, political sedition and intellectual hostility hidden under a thin veil of naïveté. Attempts at censorship undoubtedly backfired, and promoted sales. Twenty different editions of the work dated 1759 have been identified. Of those, four with 299 pages, are considered the earliest. It is estimated that 20,000 to 30,000 copies of the work were sold during its first year, making it a resounding bestseller.

"The bibliographical history of this book has been exasperatingly complex and confused, and, until recently, virtually insoluble. The cumulative analyses of Ira Wade, Giles Barber, and Stephen Weissman, however, finally succeeded in resolving the matter conclusively. The 1759 Cramer edition containing 299-pages, with the points detailed below, has been given priority: the misprint 'que ce ce fut' on p. 103, line 4 (corrected in later editions to 'que ce fut'); the incorrect adjective 'precisement' on p. 125, line 4 (corrected in later editions to 'precipitamment'); with Voltaire‟s revisions on p. 31, where an unnecessary paragraph break was eliminated, and p. 41, where several short sentences about the Lisbon earthquake were rewritten. Finally, as in all of the few known copies of the Geneva printing, Chapter XXV (signature L) does not contain the paragraph critical of contemporary German poets, which Voltaire decided to drop while the book was being printed. Ten copies of the first issue are known, of which seven were bound without the final leaves N7, a blank, and N8, instructions to the binder concerning the cancellation of two pairs of leaves (B4 and B9 and D6 and D7)" (James J. Jaffe, list prepared for the New York Antiquarian Book Fair April 11, 2011, no. 124). 

The true first state is very rare, though it is likely that a few more than ten copies exist.

Barber 299G. Bengesco 14 34. Morize 59a. Wade 1. Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) No. 204. For the influence of Candide in the history of economics see Reinert, How Rich Countries Got Rich . . . and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor (2008) XIX-XXII.

"A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland" based in Edinburgh published, in 100 fascicules issued weekly, the Encyclopaedia Britannica; or a Dictionary of Arts and Sciences Compiled upon a New Plan in which the different Sciences and Arts and digest into distinct Treatsies or Systems; and the various Technical Terms etc. are explained as they occur in the order of the Alphabets. Illustrated with One Hundred and Sixty Copperplates.

The complete first edition issued in 1771 was bound in three volumes. The Edinburgh 'society' mentioned on the title page may have consisted only of the editor, the antiquarian William Smellie, the engraver, Andrew Bell, and the printer, Colin Macfarquhar.

"It was a masterful composition although, by his own admission, Smellie borrowed liberally from many authors of his day, such as Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson. Nevertheless, the first edition of the Britannica contained gross inaccuracies and fanciful speculations; for example, it states that excess use of tobacco could cause neurodegeneration, 'drying up the brain to a little black lump consisting of mere membranes'. Smellie strove to make Britannica as usable as possible, saying that 'utility ought to be the principal intention of every publication. Wherever this intention does not plainly appear, neither the books nor their authors have the smallest claim to the approbation of mankind'. Smellie entertained strong opinions; for example, he defines farriery as 'the art of curing the diseases of horses. The practice of this useful art has been hitherto almost entirely confined to a set of men who are totally ignorant of anatomy, and the general principles of medicine.' Although possessed of wide knowledge, Smellie was not an e'pert in all matters; for example, his article on 'Woman' has but four words: "the female of man.' Despite its incompleteness and inaccuracies, Smellie's vivid prose and the easy navigation of the first edition led to strong demand for a second; some prurient engravings by Andrew Bell (later censored by King George III) may also have contributed to the success of the first edition. Smellie did not participate in the second edition of the Britannica, because he objected to the inclusion of biographical articles in an encyclopedia dedicated to the arts and sciences." (Wikipedia article on William Smellie, accessed 12-04-2008).

". . .the eleventh edition, 1910-11, is noteworthy for its index which has justly been described as the best index of any work of reference"(Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man [1967] no. 218.)

The Société typographique de Neuchâtel, a Swiss publisher and bookseller, published about 220 works during its 25 years of operation, the majority of which were counterfeit or pirated editions. Using the extensive archives of the Société, which are held at the Bibliothèque publique and the Université de Neuchâtel, and database technology, The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe Project tracks the movement of around 400,000 copies of 4,000 books across Europe.  "It details, where possible, the exact editions of these works, the routes by which they travelled and the locations of the clients that bought or sold them."

The Siku Quanshu, variously translated as the Imperial Collection of Four, Emperor's Four Treasuries, Complete Library in Four Branches of Literature, or Complete Library of the Four Treasuries, was the largest collection of books in Chinese history and, before the Wikipedia, probably the most ambitious editorial enterprise in the history of the world.

"During the height of the Qing Dynasty, the Qianlong Emperor commissioned the Siku quanshu, to demonstrate that the Qing could surpass the Ming Dynasty's 1403 Yongle Encyclopedia, which was the world's largest encyclopedia at the time.

"The editorial board included 361 scholars, with Ji Yun (紀昀) and Lu Xixiong (陸錫熊) as chief editors. They began compilation in 1773 and completed it in 1782. The editors collected and annotated over 10,000 manuscripts from the imperial collections and other libraries, destroyed some 3,000 titles, or works, that were considered to be anti-Manchu, and selected 3,461 titles, or works, for inclusion into the Siku quanshu. They were bound in 36,381 volumes (册) with more than 79,000 chapters (卷), comprising about 2.3 million pages, and approximately 800 million Chinese characters.

"Scribes copied every word by hand. 'The copyists (of whom there were 3,826) were not paid in cash but rewarded with official posts after they had transcribed a given number of words within a set time.' Four copies for the emperor were placed in specially constructed libraries in the Forbidden City, Old Summer Palace, Shenyang, and Wenjin Chamber, Chengde. Three additional copies for the public were deposited in Siku quanshu libraries in Hangzhou, Zhenjiang, and Yangzhou. All seven libraries also received copies of the 1725 imperial encyclopedia Gujin tushu jicheng.

"The Siku quanshu copies kept in Zhenjiang and Yangzhou were destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion. In 1860 during the Second Opium War an Anglo-French expedition force burned most of the copy kept at the Old Summer Palace. The four remaining copies suffered some damage during World War II. Today, the four remaining copies are kept at the National Library of China in Beijing, the National Palace Museum in Taipei, the Gansu Library in Lanzhou, and the Zhejiang Library in Hangzhou.  On the first month of the 37th year of Qianlong, the emperor issued an Imperial decree for Qing Empire, demanding the people to hand in their private book collections, in order for the compilation of Siku Quanshu. Due to the Manchu Empire's previous notorious record of Literary Inquisition such as in the case of Treason by the Book, the Chinese were too scared to hand in books, in the fear of subsequent persecution.

On October of that year, seeing that hardly any Chinese handed in books, Qianlong issued more Imperial Decrees, stressing the points (1) Books will be returned to owners once the compilation is finished. (2) Book owners would not be persecuted even if their books do contain Bad words. In less than three months after the issue of the decree, four to five thousands of different types of books were handed in.

"Apart from reassuring the book owners that they will be free from persecution, Qianlong made false promises and rewards to Chinese book owners, such as he would perform personal calligraphy on their books. By this time 10,000 types of books were handed in.

"Using the emperor initiated movement as a form of elite political contention among themselves, the Han Chinese literati of the society gave the emperor full cooperation and participation, thus helping Qianlong to fullfill his dream of establishing cultural superiority over all past emperors.

Qianlong's intention was very clear, he wanted his Siku Quanshu compilers to create a library of classical culture that contained no anti-Manchu elements, resulting in an empire-wide movement of house-to-house searches for "evil books, tracts, poetry, and plays". The movement was directed and led by Qianlong himself; the "evil texts" that were discovered were to be sent to Peking and burned, and the respective books owners, sometimes the whole families, were either sentenced to death, or exiled to remote land " (Wikipedia article on Siku Quanshu, accessed 10-26-2009).

♦ In 2004 300 sets of an edition of the Siku Quanshu were printed on handmade paper and hand-bound in 1,184 volumes.

♦ A digital version of the Siku Quanshu is available online from Eastview Information Services.

Lorenz Florenz Friedrich von Crell, professor of theoretical medicine and materia medica at the University of Helmstedt, Germany, began publication of  the first periodical specifically devoted to chemistry: Chemische Annalen für die Freunde der Naturlehre, Arzneygelahrtheit, Haushaltungskunst und Manufacturen in 1778.

The journal continued publication under this name until 1781. It resumed publication in 1784 with the title of Chemische Annalen, discontinuing publication in 1803. The journal is often called referred to as Crell's Annalen. 

The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Grenoble recently acquired a fourth, and previously unknown panel painting of the printing shop of the Liège printer Clément Plomteux by the Franco-Flemish genre painter Léonard Defrance.

This painting, and the three other paintings by Defrance that depict Plomteux's shop, are illustrated in color in the online article linked to above by Daniel Droixhe, du Groupe d'étude du XVIIIe siècle de l'Université de Liège. Defrance's paintings are among the best painted records of the printing/publishing process in the late eighteenth century.

In 1782 publisher and writer Charles-Joseph Panckoucke issued Encyclopédie méthodique, ou par ordre de matières. . . .

This 80-page work was the separate edition of the complete prospectus to Panckoucke’s monumental Encyclopédie méthodique (1782-1832). Panckoucke intended this Encyclopédie to eclipse that of Diderot and d’Alembert; it represents “the grandest gamble in the competition for the Encyclopédie market of the Old Regime” (Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment,p. 395). Panckoucke made the shortcomings of the original Encyclopédie the central theme of his campaign to promote the Méthodique. He opened his first [i.e., this] prospectus with a quotation from Voltaire’s Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, which damned Diderot’s work with faint praise as a “succès, malgré ses défauts” (Panckoucke’s italics).“M. de Voltaire désirait ardemment une nouvelle édition de l’Encycloplédie, où les fautes de la première fussent corrigées,” the prospectus explained. . . . If Voltaire’s endorsement were not persuasive enough—and who would not be impressed by a pronouncement of the great man, whose prestige was then at a peak?—those who hesitated to subscribe could consider the advice of Diderot himself, whose memoir about the faults of his Encyclopédie could be read as propaganda for Panckoucke’s. . . . The prospectus of the Méthodique quoted Diderot’s criticisms at length and showed how Panckoucke’s Encyclopédie would meet them, point by point" (Darnton, pp. 417-18).

The prospectus for Panckoucke’s Encyclopédie was issued in pamphlet form as above, in an abridged version in the Mercure de France (Dec. 8, 1781), and as part of the first volume of the dictionary Beaux-Arts in the Encyclopédie méthodique. When we checked OCLC located four copies of this pamphlet.

Between 1782 and 1832 l'Encyclopédie méthodique ou par ordre de matières par une société de gens de lettres, de savants et d'artistes; précédée d'un Vocabulaire universel, servant de Table pour tout l'Ouvrage, ornée des Portraits de MM. Diderot et d'Alembert, premiers Éditeurs de l'Encyclopédie was published in 206 volumes by French publisher and writer Charles-Joseph Panckoucke and his daughter Therese-Charlotte Agasse.

The Encyclopédie méthodique was a revised and expanded version, arranged by subject matter, of the alphabetically-arranged Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences. . . . compiled by Diderot et d'Alembert.

"Two sets of Diderot's Encyclopédie, and its supplements, were cut up into articles. Each subject category was entrusted to an exclusive editor, whose job was to collect all articles relating to his subject, and exclude those belonging to others. Great care was to be taken of those articles that were of a doubtful nature, which were not to be omitted. For certain topics, such as air, which belonged equally to chemistry, physics and medicine), the methodical arrangement had the unexpected effect of breaking up a single article into several parts. Each volume was to have its own introduction, a table of contents, and a history of the Encyclopédie. The whole work was to be linked together by a Vocabulaire Universel (Vol. 1 - 4), with references to all locations where each word appears.

"The prospectus, issued early in 1782, proposed three editions, each with seven volumes of 250 to 300 plates:

84 volumes;

43 volumes, with 3 columns per page; and

53 volumes of about 100 sheets, with 2 columns per page. . . .

"The livraisons (home-deliveries) was to be in two volumes each, the first (Jurisprudence, Vol. 1., Literature, Vol. 1,) to appear in July 1782, and the whole to be finished by 1787. The number of subscribers, 4072, was so great that the subscription list of 672 livres was closed on April 30. Twenty-five printing offices were employed, and in November 1782, the first livraison (Jurisprudence, Vol. 1, and half volume each, of arts et métiers and histoire naturelle) was issued (Wikipedia article on Encyclopédie methodique, accessed 01-21-2010).

"The Encyclopédie méthodique was issued in parts piecemeal, each instalment consisting of a number of half-volumes of different dictionaries. Though initial progress was encouraging, it quickly became apparent that more wholesale revision of Diderot’s original was called for than Panckoucke had envisaged. Not only were there inadequacies in the original work; many of the disciplines had moved on since 1751. In some cases the developments occurred while the Encyclopédie was being published: Chémie reflects the new theories of Lavoisier regarding combustion which were being formulated as the early volumes were published, and the publication of Système anatomique was long delayed, in part because of the way in which the discipline was being restructured (by its editor Vicq-d’Azyr and others) in the 1790s. Several new dictionaries were added to the scheme to cover subjects that had originally been overlooked, such as music, architecture and forestry. By 1788, a year after the dictionary was supposed to have been completed, it had reached 53 volumes, the original projected total, and was obviously less than halfway to completion.  

"As the publication grew more and more unwieldy, Panckoucke resorted to a number of measures to ensure its continued financial viability. He attempted to placate his impatient subscribers with a series of announcements emphasising the unprecedented scale of the undertaking, the great difficulties he was having in bringing it to fruition and the considerable improvements that were being made. He added an Atlas encyclopédique to the original scheme and a series of natural history plates with accompanying text (entitled Tableau encyclopédique et máthodique des trois règnes de la nature) which subscribers could pay for as an optional extra. In 1790 a number of new dictionaries were introduced on lighter subjects with titles such as Amusemens des sciences mathématiques and Dictionnaire des jeux familiers to attract more subscribers. Meanwhile publication of some of the major series was stalled owing to the editors’ other engagements, indispositions or deaths. Subscribers had to stockpile the individual parts of each series in order, sometimes for many years, before having them bound together. The extremely complex publishing history is one reason why sets of the Méthodique are rarely found complete—and why there is widespread disagreement among bibliographers over what a complete set of the Méthodique should actually comprise.

"The outbreak of the Revolution threw more obstacles in Panckoucke’s way. Printing in Paris grew prohibitively expensive as an explosion of new journals and pamphlets took up the printers’ time and bills for wages and paper grew larger. Panckoucke responded by opening a huge print-shop of his own and turning to provincial printers to maintain the momentum of his great project. He started yet another dictionary on the Assemblée nationale constituante, intended as a supplement and successor to the dictionaries of jurisprudence, commerce and economy which had been completed just in time to be rendered obsolete by the fall of the Bastille. This particular series petered out after just one volume. Inevitably the Revolution hit Panckoucke’s customer base; many wealthy subscribers fled into exile or lost their fortune, depriving him of over 2000 subscribers. At the same time his writers, involved in political work or journalism, were finding it harder and harder to produce copy. At least one fell foul of the Revolution: Jean-Marie Roland de la Platière, editor of Man ufactures, arts et métiers, committed suicide in 1793 on hearing of the condemnation of his wife. In 1794, stricken by depression, Panckoucke admitted defeat and signed over the Encyclopédie, along with his entire business, to his son-in-law Henri Agasse.  

"Agasse continued to issue numbers of the encyclopedia until his death in 1816, when it was taken over by his widow, Panckoucke’s daughter Pauline. She finally brought “l’entreprise la plus vaste du dix-huitième siècle” to a close in 1832 with the last volume of Histoire naturelle. It is difficult to imagine that many of the original subscribers were still around to see it completed. By this time it extended to (according to the most generally accepted estimate) 166½ volumes of text" (http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/deptserv/rarebooks/encmeth.html, accessed 01-21-2010).

"When 'completed', the encyclopedia suffered one great weakness. Many dictionaries have a classed index of articles; that of economie politique, being a very excellent example, giving the contents of each article, so that any passage can be found easily. As the Vocabulaire Universel, the key and index to the entire work, was not published, it was difficult to carry out any research or to find all the articles on any particular subject. The original parts had often been subdivided, and had been so added on to by other dictionaries, supplements and appendices, such that, without going into great detail, an exact account could not be given of the work, which contained 88 alphabets, 83 indexes, 166 introductions, discourses, prefaces, etc.

"Probably no more an unmanageable body of dictionaries has ever been published, except Jacques Paul Migne's Encyclopédie théologique, Paris, 1844-1875, with 168 volumes, 101 dictionaries, and 119,059 pages. Encyclopédie méthodique par ordre des matières occupied a thousand workers in production, and 2,250 contributors" (Wikipedia article on Encyclopédie methodique).

In 1785 The Daily Universal Register began publication in London. On January 1, 1788 this newspaper was renamed the The Times. 

American clergyman and historian Jeremy Belknap founded the Massachusetts Historical Society, the first historical society in the United States.

"As he [Belknap] envisioned it, the MHS would become a repository and a publisher collecting, preserving, and disseminating resources for the study of American history. Through their pledges of family papers, books, and artifacts the founding members made the Society the nation's most important historical repository by the end of their initial meeting. With the appearance of their first title at the start of 1792, they also made the MHS the nation's first institution of any description to publish in its field."

French printer, bookseller and politician Antoine-François Momoro published Traité élémentaire de l’imprimerie, ou le manuel de l’imprimeur.

"The Paris bookseller François Momoro was thirty-three years old when the Revolution began. He had arrived in Paris from his native Besançon in 1780. In 1787 he was admitted as a bookseller by the Paris Book Guild. His bookshop stocked a mere eleven titles, which he estimated in 1790 to have a total value of 19,720 livres . Momoro was one of the myriad of small Parisian book dealers with little hope of advancement within the Old Regime book guild. But with the declaration of the freedom of the press in August 1789 Momoro's career prospects suddenly opened up before him. Embracing the revolutionary movement wholeheartedly, he quickly opened a printing shop at 171 rue de la Harpe and boldly declared himself the 'First Printer of National Liberty'. Within a year he had added four presses, ten cases of type, and a small foundry for making type characters; his business assets now totaled 30,108 livres . In the publishing and printing world Momoro was still a very small fry. But he was soon to make a big name for himself in ultrarevolutionary politics.

"Momoro understood the power of the press, and he believed in unleashing its revolutionary potential. Further, he knew the business from the bottom up. In 1793, he composed and published a little treatise on printing, the Traité élémentaire de l'imprimerie, which was intended to put the practical knowledge of printing within the reach of a wide audience. It remains the single best source of eighteenth-century printing shop slang. He also used his press to launch a career in radical revolutionary politics, soon becoming the official 'Printer for the Cordeliers Club.' His printing business evolved along with the revolutionary politics of the Parisian sections, serving as a propaganda machine, first for the Cordeliers Club and then, by the winter of 1794, for the Hébertists. He produced pamphlets, minutes of meetings of the Cordeliers, and handbills and posters for several of the Parisian sections, and he also did a significant business by sending the publications of the Paris Cordeliers out into the provinces to be read before the tribunals of provincial clubs.

"When he was arrested in February 1794, the police inventoried his commercial stock. With the exception of a few sheets of a Manuel du républicain —found literally under the presses—Momoro's entire stock consisted of pamphlets, handbills, and, most important, sectional posters. His business was devoted exclusively to, and depended almost entirely on, the printed ephemera that sustained the revolutionary political life of the Paris sections. . . .

"Between 1789 and 1794 Momoro had built his entire business around agitational ephemera designed to expose counterrevolutionaries and their perfidious plots. The careers of sectional politicians and municipal bureaucrats were made and broken through his neighborhood terrorist media campaigns. At a moment's notice a flood of handbills and posters could pour forth from his presses, turning public opinion almost instantaneously. These political tactics, however ruthless and demagogic, proved effective—at least in the short run. By 1794 he had become president of the Cordeliers Club and served on the directorate of the department of Paris.

"There is also significant evidence to suggest that Momoro did quite well in his business of revolutionary ephemera. The Revolutionary Tribunal heard repeated depictions of Momoro as a greedy opportunist and ambitious parvenu, a man notorious for shady business dealings who had declared bankruptey twice. They also testified that he had gotten rich—too rich—in recent times: his wife lived in 'scandalous luxury,' with 'sumptuous furniture,' a 'superb wardrobe,' and even a carriage. But it was not just his enemies who remarked on his financial success: his uncle, the local barber, stood up in his defense, describing Momoro as an upstanding and sober businessman who, despite his bankruptcies, was worth, by 1794, 80,000 livres . In the first four years of the Revolution Momoro's business in printing revolutionary propaganda appears to have expanded, perhaps as much as twofold.

"Momoro's career, however dramatic, was not untypical. In 1789 Parisian printing exploded. In the first few years of the Revolution the industry was swept by a new generation of little printers, most of them former printing-shop workers or small book dealers who seized the cultural space opened by the declaration of freedom of the press and commerce, bought a few presses, and entered into the fast-paced world of revolutionary cultural agitation through the production of political ephemera" (Hesse, Publishing and Cultural Politics in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1810 [1991] http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft0z09n7hf/, accessed 10-10-2011).

Momoro's work was reissued with a new title in 1796.  Bigmore & Wyman, A Bibliography of Printing (new edition:2001) II, 48.

The Commission Temporaire des Poids et Mesures Républicaines (Temporary Commission on Republican Weights and Measures) in Paris published Instruction sur les mesures déduites de la grandeur de la terre, uniformes pour toute la république, et sur les calculs relatifs à leur division décimale in An II [1793/94].

In 1788 the French Academy of Sciences, at the suggestion of French diplomat Talleyrand, proposed the establishment of a new universal decimal system of measurement founded upon some “natural and invariable base” to replace Europe’s diverse regional systems. This project was approved by the National Assembly in 1790 and a basic unit or “meter” (metre) of measurement proposed, which was to be a decimal unit one ten-millionth of the distance between the terrestrial pole and the Equator. In 1791 the French national assembly voted to replace the old French unit of length (toise) with this new unit. In the summer of 1792 Jean Baptiste Delambre and Pierre François André Méchain embarked from Paris to establish the definitive length of the meter by taking geodetic measurements along the Dunkink-Barcelona meridian.

In August 1793, while Méchain and Delambre were still carrying out their task, the French National Assembly “affirmed the decimal system and the meridianal definition of the meter, ordered the continuation of the work, and decreed that the Academy provide for the manufacture, distribution, and explanation of provisional meters for general use while it prosecuted its measurements. This provisional meter was defined as a ten-millionth of ninety times the average degree in France as determined by Lacaille [in 1739-40] . . . It differed from the definitive meter by about a quarter of a millimeter” (Heilbron, pp. 227-228). The definitive meter, as determined by Méchain and Delambre, would not be announced until the publication of Delambre’s Base du système métrique decimal (1806-10).

The new metric system was first  set forth in two works issued in An II (Year Two) of the Republic (1793/94) by the Imprimerie nationale. The first was Instruction sur les mesures, which emphasized mathematics and theory; the second was an abridged version containing a shorter and simpler presentation of the system. On p. xxxii of Instruction sur les mesures the commission announced that these two versions would be followed by a third, which “will only present a précis of the system, and which will be printed partly in octavo format for distribution, and partly as a broadside to be displayed in public places for viewing by all citizens.” I have not been able to find a record of this third version.

Both Instruction sur les mesures and its abridged version were also re-issued by several other French publishers throughout the country; these provincial editions, of which I have never seen a definitive listing, are often confused with the true first edition.

The unnamed author Instruction sur les mesures was French minerologist and crystallographer René Just Haüy, a member of the Temporary Commission.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science & Medicine (1991) no. 1499. Dibner, Heralds of Science, no. 113 (citing a copy published in Macon in 1794). Heilbron, “The measure of enlightenment,” in Frängsmyr, Heilbron and Rider, eds., The Quantifying Spirit in the Eighteenth Century (1990), 207-242.

French mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace published Paris Traité de méchanique céleste in 5 volumes with several supplements. This work was "a treatise on celestial mechanics in the tradition of Newton’s Principia. Here Laplace applied his mathematical theories of probability to celestial bodies and concluded that the apparent changes in the motion of planets and their satellites are changes of long periods, and that the solar system is in all probability very stable. He gave methods for calculating the movements of translation and rotation of heavenly bodies and for resolving problems of tides, from which he deduced the mass of the moon” (Dibner, Heralds of Science (1980) no. 14). Laplace’s system of celestial mechanics (a term he coined) marked an advance over that of Newton, who had posited the necessity of a Deity in the universe to correct planetary irregularities; Laplace on the other hand, when asked by Napoleon why his system contained no mention of the Creator, replied “I had no need of such a hypothesis.”

The bibliographical makeup of Mécanique céleste is among the most complex of science classics; see Horblit and the Norman library catalogue for collations and paginations. Two issues of Vols. I-II exist, one with the imprint of Crapelet and Duprat alone and the French Republican date “An VII”; and one dated “1799” with the additional imprint reading “Berlin: chez F. T. de la Garde, Libraire,” printed for European distribution. The third volume contains a single separately paginated supplement (“Supplément au Traité de mécanique céleste . . . présenté au Bureau des Longitudes, le 17 août 1808”); the fourth volume has two separately paginated supplements (“Supplément au dixième livre du Traité de mécanique céleste. Sur l’action capillaire” and “Supplément à la théorie de l’action capillaire”). The fifth volume’s supplement,  (“Supplément au 5e volume du Traité de mécanique céleste . . .”) appeared in 1827. It is not unusual for sets to be lacking one or more of the supplements. Vol. V, comprising a series of addenda to the first four volumes, appeared twenty years after Vol. IV; according to Laplace’s “Avertissement” to this volume, each of its five books was issued separately in the month indicated on its part-title.

Horblit, One Hundred Books Famous in Science no. 63. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1277. Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 252.

Around the year 1800 publication of scientific and medical books in Latin— the international language of scholarship, religion, and science since the Roman Empire— gradually ceased. As the 19th century unfolded most scientific and medical books were published in their vernacular language of authorship, or in French, German or English. Works of scholarship or bibliography that involved Latin texts, and assumed knowledge of Latin, continued to be published in Latin mainly during the first half of the 19th century.

At the age of 24 Carl Friedrich Gauss published Disquisitiones arithmeticae in Leipzig, revolutionizing number theory.

"In this book [Gauss] standardized the notation; he systematized the existing theory and extended it; and he classified the problems to be studied and the known methods of attack and introduced new methods. . . . [The Disquisitiones] not only began the modern theory of numbers but determined the directions of work in the subject up to the present time" (Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times [1972] 813).

The typesetters of this work had difficulty understanding Gauss's new and difficult mathematics, creating numerous elaborate mistakes which Gauss was unable to correct in proof. After the book was printed Gauss insisted that, in addition to an unusually lengthy four-page errata, the worst mistakes be corrected by cancel leaves to be inserted in the copies before sale. Copies vary in the number of cancel leaves—a topic about which I have never seen a comprehensive bibliographical analysis.

The difficulty of understanding Gauss's highly technical work was hardly alleviated by the sloppy typesetting.  The few mathematicians who were able to read the Disquisitiones immediately hailed Gauss as their prince, but the full understanding required for further development did not occur until publication in 1863 of Johan Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet's less austere exposition in his Vorlesungen über Zahlentheorie.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 878. Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 257.

Very soon after arriving in Sydney, Australia in 1800, Anglo-Australian printer, editor, publisher and poet George Howe, became government printer. In 1802 he issued the first book printed in Australia, New South Wales General Standing Orders, which included Government and General Orders issued between 1791 and 1802.

Howe was born on the island of Saint Kitts in the West Indies, the son of Thomas Howe, government printer at Basseterre on St Christopher's Island.

"George and his brother were both apprenticed to the printing trade. His later work indicates that his education was thorough along the classical lines of the eighteenth century, and that he was well read in European literature. In 1790 Howe went to London and worked on The Times and other newspapers. He married and his son Robert was born in 1795. In March 1799, together with a companion, Thomas Jones, and under the name of 'George Happy alias Happy George', he was tried at the Warwick Assizes for shoplifting at Alcester; he was sentenced to death but this was commuted to transportation for life. Robert Howe later referred to Alexander McLeay as 'the benefactor of myself and my poor mother', and it was probably McLeay who enabled Howe's family to embark with him in the Royal Admiral. He arrived at Sydney in November 1800, but his wife died on the voyage. Howe himself recovered from a serious illness in 1801 and attributed his survival to D'Arcy Wentworth" (http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/howe-george-1600, accessed 02-07-2013).

On March 5, 1803 convicted and transported shoplifter, printer, editor, publisher and poet George Howe began the publication of the first newspaper in Australia, the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser.

"[Howe's son] Robert helped in the printing office when the paper began and 'had the honour, even in those infant days, of gaining the smile and eliciting the astonishment of the King's Representative when he saw us perched on a stool'. According to Robert the old printing press was worth only £2 and they had to manage with a mere 20 lbs. (9 kg) of type; but Howe was an 'ingenious man' and managed in spite of the inadequate press, a chronic shortage of ink and paper, and the refusal or inability of many of his subscribers to pay their debts. He was conditionally pardoned in 1803, and fully emancipated in 1806" (http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/howe-george-1600, accessed 02-07-2013).

The Istanbul Engineering College Press in Istanbul (Constantinople) issued the the Cedid Atlas Tercumesi (New Atlas).

This was the first world atlas printed by Muslims. Only 50 copies were issued.

In 1512 Maximilian I, archduke of Austria and Holy Roman Emperor, appointed the painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer artistic advisor for his print projects. Maximilian, like all rulers of his age, was acutely aware of his personal status, and became the first ruler to recognize the potential of the print as an effective way of perpetuating his name and dynasty. Among his commissions for the emperor, Dürer contributed forty-five pages of marginal drawings to the Prayer Book of Maximilian (1515), which revealed a light-hearted and witty side to Dürer's graphic work. 

Dürer's drawings for Maxmilian's prayer book remained unpublished until 1808 when, in order to promote the virtues of lithography for reproducing art works, the inventor of lithography, Alois Senefelder issued from his press in Munich an edition of the prayer book with Dürer's drawings as Albrecht Dürers Christlich-Mythologische Handzeichnungen. The small folio volume was the first book printed entirely by lithography. It contained a lithographed portrait of Dürer, a lithographed title in black and violet, 2 pages of lithographed text in Senefelder's hand, and 43 lithographs by Johan Nepomuk Strixner reproducing each drawing in the single color in which Dürer drew it, the single colors per drawing, including violet, sepia, red, black or green. 

Nine years later when Rudolph Ackermann set up his lithographic press in London hia first publication was an English version of Senefelder's first lithographic book: Designs of the Prayer Book. Published September 1, 1817 at R. Ackermann's Lithographic Press.  

Publishers in England introduced edition bindings of cloth-backed paper-covered boards.

In 1813 Australian natural history artist and naturalist John William Lewin issued Birds of New South Wales from Sydney. J W Lewin was the first free settler professional artist and engraver in Australia. He was also one of the first artists not to use English painting conventions when depicting Australia. He was the son of William Lewin, the author of The Birds of Great Britain with Their Eggs, Accurately Figured.  

Birds of New South Wales was the first illustrated book published in Australia. Of this work only 13 copies survived, four of which are preserved in the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney.  The book was printed by George Howe, the government printer, who in 1802 had issued the first book printed in Australia. 

Prior to issuing his 1813 book Lewin had published in England a treatise on entomology entitled Prodromus Entomology (1805), and in 1808 a book on Australian birds entitled Birds of New Holland, which described a selection of birds that he had shot. The texts of these books were edited by Lewin's brother John with the help of eminent scientists, and printed in England. Of the 1808 book only six copies are recorded: those of George III and five English subscribers. However, in Sydney, Lewin had sold subscriptions for fifty-five copies of this book, but none ever reached Sydney, the edition presumably having been lost at sea.

To make up for this loss Lewin put together another work which he called Birds of New South Wales, illustrating it with prints left over from the 1808 edition. Because Lewin compiled the copies of Birds of New South Wales from spare or discarded prints, none of the thirteen copies are identical.

In 1822 Lewin's widow, having returned to England, issued a revised second edition of Lewin's Birds of New Holland. In 1833 the third edition of Lewin's work appeared, using some sheets of text printed in 1822, on paper watermarked Whatman 1821, and some sheets printed in 1838 on paper watermarked Whatman 1838. Both the second and third editions incorporated restrikes of Lewin's original plates.  For the 1838 edition, the plates were colored from specimens lent by John Gould, and the nomenclature was overseen by Thomas Campbell Eyton. There are two issues of the third edition.

American journalist and newspaper publisher Nathan Hale and others founded The North American Review in Boston. This was the first literary magazine published in the United States.

Remarkably the journal was published continuously t was published continuously for over 100 years until 1940 when publication was suspended after its owner, J. H. Smyth,  was unmasked as a Japanese spy.  After a 24 year interruption publication resumed in 1964 at Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa under Robert Dana. Since 1968 the review has been issued from the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. Nineteenth-century archives are freely available via Cornell University Library's Making of America.

In 1233/1817 a collection of fatwas relating to the Russo-Persian war was published in Persia by means of printing from movable type.  This was the first book printed in Persia (Iran).

Marzolph, "TULLIP: A Projected Thesaurus Universalis Libri Lithographici Illustrati Persorum," Sadgrove (ed) History of Printing and Publishing in the Languages and Countries of the Middle East (2005) 27.

In 1818 printer and publisher Cornelius S. Van Winkle of New York published The Printer's Guide; or, an Introduction to the Art of Printing: Including an Essay on Punctuation and Remarks on Orthography. This work, published in small 8vo format, was the first printer's manual written by an American printer and published in the United States.  Van Winkle characterized himself on the title page as "Printer to the University of New-York."

This work was the first printing manual that described American presses, specimens of American typefounders, price lists for printing, and information on supplies.  "While some parts of the manual, as Wroth has demonstrated, derive from Stower, it was prepared by an American printer for the use of American printers. In one sense, American printing may be said to have come of age with the publication of Van Winkle" (Silver, The American Printer, 1797-1825 [1967] 96).

In 1970 The Lakeside Press, R.R. Donnelley & Sons issued an excellent facsimile edition of this manual, even reproducing the foxing and color of the original paper.  From these we learn that the first edition was issued with two separate catalogues of type specimens bound at the end:  A Specimen of Printing Types from the Foundry of E. White, and A Specimen of Printing Types Cast at D. & G. Bruce's Foundry.

Thanks to John Hightower for pointing out in January 2012 that a digital version of the first edition of van Winkle's book is available at openlibrary.org. Google books has a digital version of the 1836 printing by White & Hagar of New York, characterized as "with additions and alterations."

London publisher and bookseller William Pickering introduced the first cloth edition bindings with printed paper spine labels in his Diamond Classic Series, set in very small Diamond type, equal to 4.5 point. The first volume in the series was Cicero's De Officiis, de senectute et de amicitia, issued in 48mo, bound in reddish brown calico cloth. In addition to the title the paper labels indicated the price (5s, in the case of the Cicero).

In 1822 Muhammad Ali Pasha al-Mas'ud ibn Agha (Arabic: محمد علي باشا‎, Muḥammad ʿAlī Bāšā), self-declared Khedive of Egypt and Sudan, established a government press in Bulaq (Boulaq), Egypt, to print manuals for the military, an official manual for the administration, and textbooks for new schools.

This was the first indigenous Arabic press set up in Egypt by Muslims. It was also the first government press on the African continent, apart from the short-lived presses briefly established by Napoleon during his Egyptian campaign.

"In 1815 he [Muhammad Ali] sent Nicolas Musabiki to Rome and Milan to study type-founding and printing. Muhammad Ali also ordered three presses from Milan - along with the necessary paper and ink from Leghorn and Trieste - and, when Musabiki returned, made him manager of the Bulaq Press, working under 'Uthman Nur al-Din. The press itself, in the meantime, had been established in old Nile port of Bulaq, now a suburb of Cairo, and shortly afterwards, the second, and largest, student mission - it numbered 44 students - had returned from Paris. These men, under the leadship of Rifa'a Bey Rafi' al-Tahtawi, had studied French with a view to the translation of technical books into Arabic. The most prolific of these translators turned out to be al-Tahtawi himself. 

"Al -Tahtawi had been educated at al-Azhar University, then and now the most prestigious center for the study of the Islamic sciences in the Muslim world. There was apparently no opposition by the Shaikhs of al-Azhar to the innovation of printing. . . . Muhmmad Ali attached several professors from al-Azhar to the Bulaq Press to learn the art of printing; one became head of the foundry, another printer-in-chief, and others worked as compositors and proofreaders.

"Between 1822 and 1842, the press at Bulaq published 243 titles. . . . By far the largest number of books - 48 - were on military and naval subjects. Muhammad Ali had seen both the French and the English fleets in action, and realized how vulnerable Egypt was to invasion from the sea. He had also noted how successful the modern arms of the French had been against the antiquated weapons of the Mamluks.

"Interestingly though, the next largest category of books published by the Bulaq Press was poetry. Twenty-six works of poetry in Turkish, Persian and Arabic were published in the first 20 years of the press' operation; clearly the men associated with the Bulaq Press were as interested in traditional Islamic literature as they were in translation of European works on military tactics. After poetry comes grammar, with 21 titles, mathematics and mechanics with 16, medicine with 15 and veterinary medicine with 12. Thre rest of the books published by the press were on religion, botany, agriculture, political administration and so forth" (http://muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?ArticleID=988, accessed 06-10-2012).

♦ In December 1822 the Bulaq Press issued its first book, an Italian-Arabic dictionary by Raphael Antoine Zakhour, an Egyptian born Roman Catholic monk from Aleppo, who had accompanied Napoleon's French expedition on its return to France as a translator:

Dizionario Italiano e Arabo che Contiene in Succinto Tutti Vocaboli che Sono Piu in Uso e Piu Necessari per Imparpar a Parlare de Due Lingue Correttamente Egli e Diviso in Due Parti. Part 1. De Dizionario Disposto Com il Solito Nell-ordine Alfabetico. Parte II. Che Contiene Una Breve Raccolta di Nomi e di Verbi li Piu Neccesari, e Piu Utili all Studio Dell Due Lingue. Bolacco: Dall Stamperio Reale, M.D.CCC.XXII.

Conforming with the idea of Muhammad Ali of "openness toward Europe to achieve development," Italian delegations were sent to Italy, and Italian became the first foreign language taught in Egyptian schools.

By 1851 the Bulaq press issued 570 works.

Cheng-Hsiang Hsu, "A Survey of Arabic-character Publications Printed in Egypt during the Period of 1238-1267 (1822-1851)," Sadgrove (ed) History of Printing and Publishing in the Languages and Countries of the Middle East (2005) 1-16.

In 1825 the English Church Missionary Society established a press in Malta to publish books in Arabic and Turkish. These included Christian texts and also secular educational texts intended for Muslim, Christian and Jewish pupils in the new missionary schools and colleges of the Middle East. They also issued a periodical in the style of a newspaper.

Through 1842 this press issued over 150,000 books for distribution throughout the Middle East and Turkey.

"The role of the Malta press in standardising layouts and methods of presentation of printed Arabic texts had a significant impact. Some of the new features which it introduced correspond with several which Elizabeth Eisenstein mentioned, in her seminal work on the printing press as an agent of change, as significant in the systematisation of thought-processes in the formative era of European print culture. The use of title-pages engendered 'new habits of placing and dating' as well as helping the later development of new standards of cataloguing and enumerative bibliography. The use of footnotes, running heads and abbreviations, as well as Shidyaq's experiment's with punctuation, all served to 'reorder the thought of readers and to create a new 'esprit de système.'

"The plates and engravings in some of the Malta books also broke new ground. The views and story illustrations incorporated perspective, which was still a very new convention in Arab pictorial representation, and one which, as McLuhan and others have pointed out, implied a new reordering of concsciousness by the adoption of a fixed point of view. The lithographed diagrams, which accompanied an astronomical work published in Malta in 1833, were another important new feature of the Arabic book. Technical illustrations were sometimes found in Arabic manuscripts; but, as David James has aptly observed, 'in the absence of the printing press, transmission of technical data depends upon the accuracy of the scribe. The problem becomes doubly difficult when information has also to be communicated in the form of diagrams. . . . [which] were regarded by the copyists as little more than an exotic appendage, frequently misplaced and sometimes omitted.' With the introduction of standard, repeatable, engraved diagrams incorproated into printed books, the presentation of such information became transformed.

"In this the Malta press shared with the Bulaq press [founded in 1822] a pioneering role in the Arab world, and what was true of diagrams was equally true of printed maps, in which field the Malta atlas of 1835 also broke new gound. In Tunisia the first atlas was printed in 1860, in Egypt regular Arabic map printing did not begin until 1870, although copies of the Malta atlas itself were made there at an earlier date. . . ." (Roper 118-119).

Roper, "Arabic Books Printed in Malta 1826-42:Some Physical Characteristics," Sadgrove (ed) History of Printing and Publishing the the Languages and Countries of the Middle East (2005) 111-130, with illustrations.

In the first quarter of the nineteenth century roughly 600 new books per year were produced throughout the United Kingdom (Twyman, Printing 1770-1970, 10).

The first newspaper published in South America was the Diario de Pernambuco, first published on November 7, 1825.  Published in Recife, Brazil, this remains the oldest continuously circulating daily in Latin America.

French romantic artist Eugène Delacroix published an illustrated edition of Goethe's Faust:

Faust, Tragédie M.de Goethe, Traduite en Français par M. Albert Stapfer, ornée d'un Portrait de l'Auteur, et de dix-sept dessins composés d'après les principales scènes de l'ouvrage et exécutés sur pierre par M. Eugène Delacroix. The book was published in Paris by Ch. Motte and Sautelet. It contained a frontispiece portrait of Goethe and 17 lithographed plates drawn on stone by Delacroix. This was one of the major art books illustrated by lithography and the beginning of the French tradition of the painter-lithographer, with the artist preparing his own images on stone for the press. It is usually considered the first livre d'artiste.

Though the edition met initially with a hostile reception because of the free, fantastic style of the images, Goethe appreciated their power, writing to Eckermann after he had seen some of the lithographs in November, 1826:

"One must acknowledge that this M. Delacroix has a great talent, which in Faust has found its true nourishment. The French public reproach him for an excess of savage force, but, actually, here it is perfectly suitable . . . If I have to agree that M. Delacroix has surpassed the scenes my writing has conjured up in my own imagination, how much more will readers of the book find his compositions full of reality, and passing beyond the imagery which they envision?" (quoted by Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book 1700-1914 [1982] no. 143, p. 208).

Concerning the images Delacroix later remarked:

"The peculiar character of the illustrations themselves invited caricature and confirmed my reputation as one of the leaders of the school of ugliness. Gérare, however, although an academician, complimented me on some of the drawings, particularly that of the tavern" (quoted by Breon Mitchell, The Complete Illustrations from Delacroix's "Faust" and Mante's "The Raven" (1981) vii.)

At the age of 20, Louis Braille, blind from the age of 5, and a student at l'Institut Royale des Jeunes Aveugles in Paris published Procede pour écrire les Paroles, la Musique et le Plain-chant au moyen de points, a l’usage des aveugles et dispose pour eux.

This large quarto volume of 4 preliminary leaves and 32 pages included the first presentation of the Braille system of printing and reading for the blind, which represents letters and numbers by combinations of six dots.

Though Braille introduced his six dot system briefly in his 1829 work, most of the Procede pour écrire was published through the traditional system of printing for the blind using raised letters that was invented by the founder of l'Institut Royale des Jeunes Aveugles, Valentin Haüy. In 1837 Braille added symbols for mathematics and music to his six dot system.

“The Braille system was not given an immediate welcome; it was only in 1854 that it was officially accepted by the Institute itself. But at an international congress in Paris in 1878 it was adopted throughout Europe. It is now in use virtually throughout the literate world” (Carter & Muir, Printing & the Mind of Man [1967] no. 292.

First appearance of case bindings which allowed mechanized stamping on spine and covers.

In 1832 Yisrael Bak and his son Nissan opened a printing press in the town of Safed  (Safad) in northern Palestine (now Israel). This was the first press to operate in Palestine since about 1577.

Ayalon, "The Beginnings of Publishing in pre-1948 Palestine," in Sadgrove (ed) History of Printing and Publishing in the Languages and Countries of the Middle East (2005) 69.

Mathematician János Bolyai published "Appendix scientiam spatii absolute veram exhibens: a veritate aut falsitate axiomatis xi Euclidei (a priori haud unquam decidenda) independentem. . . ." appended to a textbook by his mathematician father Farkas Bolyai, entitled Tentamen juventutem studiosam in elementa matheseos purae I pp. [2] [1]-26 [2] pp. (second series). The two volumes appeared in Maros Vasarhelyini, Hungary, printed  by Joseph and Simon Kali, at the press of the Reform College.

Although the idea of a non-Euclidean geometry had occured independently to several nineteenth-century mathematicians, János Bolyai was one of the first to publish an organized, deductive and logically based system that was avowedly non-Euclidean. He was preceded only by Lobachevskii (Lobachevsky), whose "O nachalakh geometrii"  (On the Foundations of Geometry) had been published in the obscure periodical, Kazanskii vestnik, izdavaemyi pri Imperatorskom Kazamskom Universitete in Kazan, Russia, in 1829-30, but Bolyai remained unaware of the Russian's work until 1848, when he came across the German translation Lobachevskii's Geometrische Untersuchungen (1840). Bolyai and Lobachevskii are generally given equal credit for the invention of non-Euclidean geometry.

János Bolyai began developing his new geometry in 1820, and completed it five years later. He undertook this task despite the warnings of his father, who discouraged his son in the strongest terms from trying to prove or refute Euclid's parallel axiom; in a letter written in 1820, Farkas told his son not to "tempt the parallels" and to "shy away from it as from lewd intercourse, it can deprive you of all your leisure, your health, your peace of mind and your entire happiness." The elder Bolyai found his son's new geometry of "absolute space" unacceptable, but finally, in the summer of 1831, decided to send János's manuscript to his old friend Carl Friedrich Gauss. Neither of the Bolyais knew that Gauss had been working for thirty years on developing his own non-Euclidean geometry, so János was dreadfully shocked to read in Gauss's reply that he [Gauss] could not praise János's system since to do so would be to praise himself! Despite this blow, János agreed to let his paper be published as an appendix to his father's obscure mathematics textbook printed in a small edition by an equally obscure Hungarian school publisher.

Unsurprisingly, Bolyai's paper failed to attract the attention of contemporary mathematicians, and his new geometry remained almost completely unknown until 1867, when German mathematician Heinrich Richard Baltzer publicized the achievements of Bolyai and Lobachevskii in his Elemente der Mathematik.

Bibliographical Comments

The Tentamen was very crudely or printed at a school press; copies exhibit the earmarks of non-professional or inexperienced publishing, particularly in the clumsy typography and numerous errata and corrigenda leaves, which must have made the Tentamen extremely difficult to use. These leaves were printed on different paper stocks and were obviously added after the original printing. Copies seem to incorporate other bibliographical variations; however, a thorough analysis of the extant copies remains to be done. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) No. 259 includes a collation and discussion of tentative issue points. The subscribers' lists in Vol. i (1r+v) and Vol. ii (266v) indicate that 156 copies were subscribed for, and the edition was probably not much larger than this. In 2010 less than 20 copies were recorded. 

Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972) 873-880.

English writer, printer and publisher Charles Knight published The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge every Saturday from March 31, 1832 to October 31, 1845. The magazine, of which each issue consisted of 8 pages liberally illustrated with woodcuts, was marketed to the English working classes. As its title indicated, it sold for only a penny per issue, the price being the same anywhere within the United Kingdom. According to the title pages of volumes 1-3 in my collection, after these volumes were completed the issues of volume 1 were available for 4s. 6d. in nine monthly parts or 6s. bound in cloth, and issues of volume 2 were available for 6s in twelve montly parts and 7s. 6d. bound in cloth, the same low price maintained for volume 3. An aspect of the magazine was that Knight, as publisher, sometimes communicated with his readers by writing articles for the magazine himself. At the end of the first year of publication, on December 18, 1832 he wrote a preface to the first volume. In that he stated that the magazine was very successful, with circulation reaching 160,000 by the end of the first month after publication, and reaching 200,000 the first year.  

To print and distribute that many copies weekly pushed the limit of printing technology at the time, using mechanized presses invented by Augustus Applegath at the printing house of William Clowes in London. Obviously proud of the technical and other aspects, including the very low selling price, in the magazine's second year of publication Knight wrote and published a memorable series of articles in four "Monthly Supplements" to the regular issues under the general title "The Commercial History of a Penny Magazine." "No. 1--Introduction & Paper-Making"  appeared in Issue 96, August 31 to September 30, 1833, pp. 377-84. "No. 2. Wood-cutting and Type-founding" appeared in Issue 101, September 39 to October 31, 1833, pp. 417-24. "No. 3. Compositors' Work and Sterotyping" appeared in issue 107, October 31 to November 30, 1833, pp. 465-72, and "No. 4. Printing Presses and Machinery—Bookbinding" appeared in issue 112, November 30 to December 31, 1833, pp. 505-11. These articles represent one of the very best illustrated introductions to the history and technology of printing, woodcut illustration and binding as practiced during the first third of the nineteenth century.

The earliest known printed detachable paper covering for a book is for The Keepsake . . . 1833 published by Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green & Longman in London, 1832. This was printed on front and back, the back cover containing an advertisement. It was designed to enclose the book completely, like wrapping paper.  Such wrappers were probably intended to be discarded by the user. The unique copy of the original with the jacket belonged to antiquarian bookseller and bibliographer John Carter, who reported on it in Publisher's Weekly in 1934, and Bibliographical Notes & Queries in 1935  The original was lost in 1952 "on the way to the Bodleian," as reported by Carter in Books and Book-Collectors (1956). Fortunately it had been photographed.

Tanselle, Book-Jackets: Their History, Forms, and Use (2011)  No. 32.1 (p. 112) illustrating the jacket from Carter's photograph as plate 1.

The first complete printed edition of the Thousand and One Nights in the original Arabic, Kitab Alf layla wa-layla, was produced in Bulaq (Boulaq) Egypt, a district of Cairo, by Matba‘at Bulaq in 2 volumes in 1251  AH, or 1835. The opening page was decorated with woodcuts, and the entire text was framed by double rules.  The edition was printed by letterpress. It was preceded by the 1814-1818 Arabic edition issued in Calcutta (Kolkata), India by the British East India Company with an English title page.  That edition contained only the first 200 "Nights."  

The first description of 1835 edition that I ever saw was item No. 50 in A Selection of Books, Autographs and Manuscripts, Jointly offered for sale by Antiquariat Inlibris and Kotte Autographs in 2012.  They indicated that OCLC listed eight copies in institutions and that no copy had appeared at auction within the past 50 years.

From his private press at his estate at Middle Hill, Broadway, Worcestershire, England, Sir Thomas Phillipps issued Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum in bibliotheca d. Thomae Phillips, Bt.

According to A.N.L. Munby, this catalogue of Phillipps's manuscript collection, published in fascicules, or parts, over more than thirty years, was issued in only 50 copies, of which only three surviving copies may be considered complete. The fascicules were printed by a variety of printers, only some of whom worked at Phillipps's estate, and Phillipps bound up copies from both corrected and uncorrected sheets, resulting in copies that are exceptional in their bibliographical complexity. The catalogue includes 23,837 entries, which, for various reasons outlined by Munby, describe a considerably larger collection that may have comprised about 60,000 manuscripts. In 1968 Munby issued, in an edition of 500 copies, a facsimile of a complete copy of the Phillips catalogue which belonged at the time to rare book dealer Lew D. Feldman: The Phillipps Manuscripts. Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum . . . with an introduction by A.N.L. Munby. (London: Holland Press).

"Philipps began his collecting while still at Rugby School and continued at Oxford. Such was his devotion that he acquired some 40,000 printed books and 60,000 manuscripts, arguably the largest collection a single individual has created. . . . A.N.L. Munby notes that '[h]e spent perhaps between two hundred thousand and a quarter of a million pounds[,] altogether four or five thousand pounds a year, while accessions came in at the rate of forty or fifty a week.' His success as a collector owed something to the dispersal of the monastic libraries following the French Revolution and the relative cheapness of a large amount of vellum material, in particular English legal documents, many of which owe their survival to Phillipps. He was an assiduous cataloguer who established the Middle Hill Press (named after his country seat at Broadway, Worcestershire) in 1822 not only to record his book holdings but also to publish his findings in English topography and geneology."

"During his lifetime Phillipps attempted to turn over his collection to the British nation and corresponded with the then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Disraeli in order that it should be acquired for the British Library. Negotiations proved unsuccessful and ultimately the dispersal of his collection took over 100 years. Phillipps's will stipulated that his books should remain intact at Thirlestaine House, that no bookseller or stranger should rearrange them and that no Roman Catholic should be permitted to view them. In 1885 the Court of Chancery declared this too restrictive and thus made possible the sale of the library which Phillipps’s grandson Thomas FitzRoy Fenwick supervised for the next fifty years. Significant portions of the European material were sold to the national collections on the continent including the Royal Library, Berlin, the Royal Library of Belgium and the Provincial Archives in Utrecht as well as the sale of outstanding individual items to the J. Pierpont Morgan and Henry E. Huntington libraries. By 1946 what was known as the 'residue' was sold to London booksellers Phillip and Lionel Robinson for £100,000, though this part of the collection was uncatalogued and unexamined. The Robinsons endeavored to sell these books through their own published catalogues and a number of Sothebys sales. The final portion of the collection was sold to New York bookseller H.P. Kraus in 1977 who issued a sale catalogue the same year: the last to bear the title Bibliotheca Phillippica. A five-volume history of the collection and its dispersal, Phillipps Studies, by A.N.L. Munby was published between 1951 and 1960" (Wikipedia article on Sir Thomas Phillipps, accessed 11-25-2008).

In 1838 English printer and publisher Charles Knight received British patent No. 7673 for "Improvements in the Process and in the Apparatus used in the Production of Coloured Impressions on Paper, Vellum, Parchment, and Pasteboard by Surface Printing." Knight called his color printing process "illuminated printing," and invented it for the economical printing of colored pictures, maps, and drawings.

"At first only four colours were contemplated, and by some ingenious mechanism he contrived that they should all be applied in the course of a single passage of the sheet through the press, which was operated by hand. Knight, like Savage, had a decided preference for a press of the 'Ruthven' type, in which the platen was normally at the back, but was brought over the forme by means of two springs, which 'gave' to the pull, but resumed their ordinary position when the bar was released. Knight fitted the machine, in place of the usual bed, with a polygonal revolving frame, or, as he called it, 'prism' (attached to a rising table), each face of which, carrying a colour block, was applied in sucession to the sheet as the frame revolved. In an alternative method, the frame with the blocks on it revolved ona sort of turn-table, placed on the bed of the press; whilst in a third, the tympan, with the sheet attached, was carried from block to block. It will be remembered that this idea of printing several colours at one operation of the press had been to some extent anticpated by Lalleman, at Paris, two centuries earlier. The specification also describes an apparatus in which the colour blocks were on beds, hinged to the sides of a square table, and turned backward to be inked by hand, and down again for the impression. The process was in regular operation in 1839, as the Quarterly Review for December in that year contains an article, headed "The Printer's Devil," in which is a description of Clowes' printing establishment, and a fairly lengthy reference to Knight's colour-printing method, which the writer of the article in question saw at work, in connection with the production of "Patent Illuminated Maps." He describes the printing apparatus as resembling a square box, each of the four sides of which carried a printing plate, for blue, yellow, red and black respectively, which were applied to the sheet in the ordered named, the last having the letterpress matter for the names of places,etc. The tints being partly blended on the paper, three more were furnished in that way, i.e. the yellow and the red gave orange, the yellow and blue green, and so on, there being thus seven colours in all" (Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers [1910] 141-43).

In 1839 Knight issued a couple of examples of "illuminated printing" in his publication of Jackson's A Treatise on Wood Engraving Historical and Practical. One of my copies contains at p. 715 as called for in the List of Illustrations, "A Café in Constantinople, and a Design for a Pattern, two of "Mr. Knight's Patent Illuminated Prints." My other copy substitutes Knight's "Patent Illuminated Map" of Ancient Jerusalem, a double-page tip-in, for the Constantinople scene.  Both copies also contain a more finely detailed Baxter print of "Parsonage at Ovingham" at p. 713.

In 1840 Knight published a series of his "illuminated maps" in Hughes, The Illuminated Atlas of Scripture Geography: A Series of Maps Delineating the Physical and Historical Features in the Geography of Palestine and the Adjacent Countries accompanyied with An Explanatory Notice of Each Map. . . This small 4to contained 20 double-page maps color-printed by Knight's process. Regarding the maps, the work stated on p. 6:

"Lastly, we have to explain in a few words the peculiarities which distinguish the appearance of these Maps from any which have hitherto been published. These are, —1st, That, by a novel method of printing, the various divisions of the countries are covered with distinct colours, so that the boundaries are clearly perceived at the first view; and 2nd, That the mountains, instead of being, as in maps engraved in the usual manner, indicated by black lines, are in white, distinctly and prominently relieved by the coloured ground. In the best engraved maps a serious imperfection has always been felt to result from the names and the hills being alike printed in black, in consequence of which, either names are obscured by the hills, or the hills must be omitted in order to allow of the names being read. This renders them exceedingly difficult of reference; and it may be generally remarked of engraved maps, that in proportion as the physical features of country are fully and correctly delineated, so do the names and boundaries become obscure and unintelligble. In the ordinary process of map-engraving, the evil complained of appears unavoidable; but this is no longer the case when a different medium is used for conveying each part of the requisite information. By the method adopted in this series of Maps, the physical features of the countries—their hills and valleys—their lakes and streams—are clearly delinieated, without in the least interfering with the exhibition of names and places; while their various divisions, distinguished by colours, are presented at once and distinctly to the eye of the student. They will thus, it is believed, be found better calculated than any hitherto published to serve the important purposes of School and Home Education."

The graphic reproduction process which came to be called anastatic printing first began to be known in October 1841 when the proprietors of the London journal, the Athenaeum received from a correspondent in Berlin a reprint of 4 pages of their issue of September 25, containing some woodcut illustrations. This was so perfect a facsimile that they immediately inquired as to how it had been done, and they learned that it had been made by a secret new process.  In their issue No. 736 of December 4, 1841 the Athenaeum published a notice on p. 932 entitled "Printing and Piracy-New Discovery" concerning the dangers to the publishing industry that such a high quality facsimile method could pose, particularly with regard to expensive illustrated works, production of facsimiles of which had previously been assumed to be difficult and expensive. The new process, it was learned, had been invented by a C. F. Baldamus of Germany, and promoted by the German engineer and entrepreneur Carl Wilhelm Siemens, later known in England as William Siemens. Siemens went into partnership with the English engineer Joseph Woods, who developed the process and received British Patent No. 10,219 in 1844 for "Improvements in Producing Designs and Copies, and in Multiplying Impressions either of Printed or Written Surfaces." In the patent, which included 3 large folding engineering plans of machinery used, Woods proposed to call the process "anastatic printing." The process was rapidly adopted and used under other names such as "photozincography." 

On April 12, 1845 American writer, poet, editor, literary critic, and magazinist Edgar Allan Poe published in the Broadway Journal I, 229-231 an article entitled "Anastatic Printing."  With this new process of facsimile reproduction Poe foresaw huge advantages over the stereotype process, as anastatic printing plates could be produced quickly and cheaply, obviating the need to store bulky stereotype plates or flong.  He foresaw an increase in the production of pirated editions since anyone with anastatic equipment could reproduce any book they wanted.  Poe also believed that anastatic technology would enable authors to write out and publish their own books as facsimiles of manuscripts, including drawings, avoiding the costly and time-consuming typesetting process. 

Here is what Poe wrote:

"It is admitted by every one that of late there has been a rather singular invention, called Anastatic Printing, and that this invention may possibly lead, in the course of time, to some rather remarkable results — among which the one chiefly insisted upon, is the abolition of the ordinary stereotyping process: — but this seems to be the amount, in America at least, of distinct understanding on this subject.

" 'There is no exquisite beauty,' says Bacon, 'without some strangeness in the proportions.' The philosopher had reference, here, to beauty in its common acceptation; but the remark is equally applicable to all the forms of beauty — that is to say, to everything which arouses profound interest in the heart or intellect of man. In every such thing, strangeness — in other words novelty — will be found a principal element; and so universal is this law that it has no exception even in the case of this principal element itself. Nothing, unless it be novel — not even novelty itself — will be the source of very intense excitement among men. Thus the ennyue who travels in the hope of dissipating his ennui by the perpetual succession of novelties, will invariably be disappointed in the end. He receives the impression of novelty so continuously that it is at length no novelty to receive it. And the man, in general, of the nineteenth century — more especially of our own particular epoch of it — is very much in the predicament of the traveller in question. We are so habituated to new inventions, that we no longer get from newness the vivid interest which should appertain to the new — and no example could be adduced more distinctly showing that the mere importance of a novelty will not suffice to gain for it universal attention, than we find in the invention of Anastatic Printing. It excites not one fiftieth part of the comment which was excited by the comparatively frivolous invention of Sennefelder [sic]; — but he lived in the good old days when a novelty was novel. Nevertheless, while Lithography opened the way for a very agreeable pastime, it is the province of Anastatic Printing to revolutionize the world.

"By means of this discovery anything written, drawn, or printed, can be made to stereotype itself, with absolute accuracy, in five minutes.

"Let us take, for example, a page of this Journal; supposing only one side of the leaf to have printing on it. We dampen the leaf with a certain acid diluted, and then place it between two leaves of blotting-paper to absorb superfluous moisture. We then place the printed side in contact with a zinc plate that lies on the table. The acid in the interspaces between the letters, immediately corrodes the zinc, but the acid on the letters themselves, has no such effect, having been neutralized by the ink. Removing the leaf at the end of five minutes, we find a reversed copy, in slight relief, of the printing on the page; — in other words, we have a stereotype-plate, from which we can print a vast number of absolute facsimiles of the original printed page — which latter has not been at all injured in the process — that is to say, we can still produce from it (or from any impression of the stereotype plate) new stereotype plates ad libitum. Any engraving, or any pen-and-ink drawing, or any MS. can be stereotyped in precisely the same manner.

The facts of the invention are established. The process is in successful operation both in London and Paris. We have seen several specimens of printing done from the plates described, and have now lying before us a leaf (from the London Art-Union) covered with drawing, MS., letter-press, and impressions from wood-cuts, -the whole printed from the Anastatic stereotypes, and warranted by the Art-Union to be absolute fac-similes of the originals. The process can scarcely be regarded as a new invention, — and appears to be rather the modification and successful application of two or three previously ascertained principles -those of etching, electrography, lithography, etc. It follows from this that there will be much difficulty in establishing or maintaining a right of patent, and the probability is that the benefits of the process will soon be thrown open to the world. As to the secret — it can only be a secret in name. 

"That the discovery (if we may so call it) has been made can excite no surprise in any thinking person — the only matter for surprise is, that it has not been made many years ago. The obviousness of the process, however, in no degree lessens its importance. Indeed its inevitable results enkindle the imagination, and embarrass the understanding. Every one will perceive, at once, that the ordinary process of stereotyping will be abolished. Through this ordinary process, a publisher, to be sure, is enabled to keep on hand the means of producing edition after edition of any work the certainty of whose sale will justify the cost of stereotyping — which is trifling in comparison with that of re-setting the matter. But still, positively, this cost (of stereotyping) is great. Moreover, there cannot always be certainty about sales. Publishers frequently are forced to reset works which they have neglected to stereotype, thinking them unworthy the expense ; and many excellent works are not published at all, because small editions do not pay, and the anticipated sales will not warrant the cost of stereotype. Some of these difficulties will be at once remedied by the Anastatic Printing, and all will be remedied in a brief time. A publisher has only to print as many copies as are immediately demanded. He need print no more than a dozen, indeed, unless he feels perfectly confident of success. Preserving one copy, he can from this, at no other cost than that of the zinc, produce with any desirable rapidity, as many impressions as he may think proper. Some idea of the advantages thus accruing may be gleaned from the fact that in several of the London publishing warehouses there is deposited in stereotype plates alone, property to the amount of a million sterling.

"The next view of the case, in point of obviousness, is, that, if necessary, a hundred thousand impressions per hour, or even infinitely more, can be taken of any newspaper, or similar publication. As many presses can be put in operation as the occasion may require : — indeed there can be no limit to the number of copies producible, provided we have no limit to the number of presses. The tendency of all this to cheapen information, to diffuse knowledge and amusement, and to bring before the public the very class of works which are most valuable, but least in circulation on account of unsaleability — is what need scarcely be suggested to any one. But benefits such as these are merely the immediate and most obvious — by no means the most important.

"For some years, perhaps, the strong spirit of conventionality — of conservatism — will induce authors in general to have recourse, as usual, to the setting of type. A printed book, now, is more sightly, and more legible, than any MS. and for some years the idea will not be overthrown that this state of things is one of necessity. But by degrees it will be remembered that, while MS. was a necessity, men wrote after such fashion that no books printed in modern times have surpassed their MSS. either in accuracy or in beauty. This consideration will lead to the cultivation of a neat and distinct style of handwriting — for authors will perceive the immense advantage of giving their own manuscripts directly to the public without the expensive interference of the type-setter, and the often ruinous intervention of the publisher. All that a man of letters need do, will be to pay some attention to legibility of MS., arrange his pages to suit himself, and stereotype them instantaneously, as arranged. He may intersperse them with his own drawings, or with anything to please his own fancy, in the certainty of being fairly brought before his readers, with all the freshness of his original conception about him.

"And at this point we are arrested by a consideration of infinite moment, although of a seemingly shadowy character. The cultivation of accuracy in MS., thus enforced, will tend with an inevitable impetus to every species of improvement in style — more especially in the points of concision and distinctness- and this again, in a degree even more noticeable, to precision of thought, and luminous arrangement of matter. There is a very peculiar and easily intelligible reciprocal influence between the thing written and the manner of writing — but the latter has the predominant influence of the two. The more remote effect on philosophy at large, which will inevitably result from improvement of style and thought in the points of concision, distinctness, and accuracy, need only be suggested to be conceived.

"As a consequence of attention being directed to neatness and beauty of MS., the antique profession of the scribe will be revived, affording abundant employment to women — their delicacy of organization fitting them peculiarly for such tasks. The female amanuensis, indeed, will occupy very nearly the position of the present male type-setter, whose industry will be diverted perforce into other channels.

"These considerations are of vital importance — but there is yet one beyond them all. The value of every book is a compound of its literary value and its physical or mechanical value as the product of physical labor applied to the physical material. But at present the latter value immensely predominates, even in the works of the most esteemed authors. It will be seen, however, that the new condition of things will at once give the ascendency to the literary value, and thus by their literary values will books come to be estimated among men. The wealthy gentleman of elegant leisure will lose the vantage-ground now afforded him, and will be forced to tilt on terms of equality with the poor devil author. At present the literary world is a species of anomalous Congress, in which the majority of the members are constrained to listen in silence while all the eloquence proceeds from a privileged few. In the new regime, the humblest will speak as often and as freely as the most exalted, and will be sure of receiving just that amount of attention which the intrinsic merit of their speeches may deserve.

"From what we have said it will be evident that the discovery of Anastatic Printing will not only not obviate the necessity of copy-right laws, and of international law in especial, but will render this necessity more imperative and more apparent. It has been shown that in depressing the value of the physique of a, book, the invention will proportionately elevate the value of its morale, and since it is the latter value alone which the copy-right laws are needed to protect, the necessity of the protection will be only the more urgent and more obvious than ever."

The American patent No. 4, 239  for"Improvement in Anastatic Printing" was granted to C. F. Baldamus and F. W. Siemens of Berlin, Prussia on October 25, 1845. 

Herbert Ingram and Mark Lemon of Punch published the first issue of The Illustrated London News. "Costing sixpence, the magazine had 16 pages and 32 woodcuts. It included pictures of the war in Afghanistan, a train crash in France, a steamboat explosion in Canada and a fancy dress ball at Buckingham Palace."

This was probably the first attempt to publish an illustrated news publication. The Illustrated London News continued as a weekly until 1971.

On December 17, 1842 the first weekly issue of Family Herald or Useful Information and Amusement for the Million appeared in London. Owned and edited by James Elishama Smith, and published by George Biggs, the journal was typeset using the Young & Delcambre typesetting machine, an image of which was used in the title-piece of the journal. The original format was only four folio-sized pages. Because women operated the typesetting equipment its use was opposed by the London Union of Compositors, and the journal ceased publication in this form after only 22 weekly issues. 

Biggs relaunched the Family Herald on May 13, 1843 in a 16-page double-column quarto format priced at only 1d, presumably using conventional manual typesetting methods. In this form it became a major success with circulation reaching 300,000 in 1855, falling to 200,000 in 1860.

Blake (ed), Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland (2009) 213-214.

On May 1, 1843 English Academic painter and illustrator John Callcott Horsley designed the first commercially produced Christmas card, commissioned by English civil servant and inventor Henry Cole.  The card, which read "A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year to You," was controversial because it included a picture of a family with a small child drinking wine together. This possibly contributed to its commercial success with two printings totalling 2050 cards sold in 1843 for one shilling each. On November 24, 2001 a copy of this card sold for £22,500 at auction at Henry Aldridge and Son in Devizes, Wiltshire, England.

Anna Atkins, an English amateur botanist and the first woman phtographer, published the first installment of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions.  Atkins published this work privately with a handwritten text from her home in Sevenoaks, Kent, England. She issued a very small number of copies from cyanotypes contact printed by placing specimens directly onto coated paper, allowing the action of light to create a sillhouette effect. Photographs of British Algae was the first book illustrated with photographs, and the first serious application of photography to a scientific subject. Atkins extended the work into three volumes, with the last part appearing in 1853. 

In May 2011 only seventeen copies of Atkins's book were recorded, in various states of completeness. Only the copy in the Royal Society seems to be complete as Atkins intended, with 389 plates.  Robert Hunt's copy, with 382 plates was sold at Christie's, London for £229,250 ($406,460) in May 2004.

♦ Further background information and digital facsimiles are available at the NYPL Digital Gallery.

John Browne Bell began publication in London of The News of the World. 

"Priced at just three pence (equal to £1.04 today), even before the repeal of the Stamp Act (1855) or paper duty (1861), it was the cheapest newspaper of its time and was aimed directly at the newly literate working classes. It quickly established itself as a purveyor of titillation, shock and criminal news. Much of the source material came from coverage of vice prosecutions, including transcripts of police descriptions of alleged brothels, streetwalkers, and 'immoral" women.' (Wikipedia article on News of the World, accessed 07-07-2011).

During 1844 and 1845 London printer and publisher Charles Knight issued Old England: A Pictorial Museum in ninety-six fascicules in small folio format containing 24 plates printed by his patented color printing process, and a total of 2,488 numbered wood engravings.  When the set was complete title pages were issued for two volumes, and Knight offered the set for sale in publisher's cloth bindings, blind-stamped and gilt in 1845.  Knight was the first English book publisher to offer printed color plates at a low price for wider market. Old England must have been a success since copies were readily available in 2012.

British inventor William Henry Fox Talbot published The Pencil of Nature in six fascicules in London through the firm of Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans. This work was illustrated with 24 calotypes or talbotypes, a photographic process invented by Fox Talbot in 1841, in which salted paper prints were made from paper negatives. It was the "first photographically illustrated book to be commercially published," or "the first commercially published book illustrated with photographs."  

Because the work was a complete novelty to the book-buying public Fox Tablot published a brief "Notice to the Reader" explaining the nature of the images:

"The plates of the present work are impressed by the agency of Light alone without any aid whatever from the artist's pencil. They are the sun-pictures themselves, and not, as some persons have imagined, engravings in imitation."

Fox Talbot originally intended to publish additional fascicules but discontinued publication after six because the work was a commercial failure.

Approximately 40 copies of original edition of The Pencil of Nature have survived.

Two facsimiles were published in print in the 20th century, one in the 21st. The text and images are also available online. 

On November 1, 1848 the first WH Smith railway bookstall opened in Euston Station, London.

Railroad transportation and railroad stations provided a whole new market for printing, publishing, and bookselling. Inexpensive novels or "Yellowbacks" were published to supply a wider range of society. It became a common practice to publish novels in weekly, fortnightly or monthly parts to spread the cost.

English writer, folklorist, and demographer William John Thoms edited the first issue of Notes and Queries: A Medium of Inter-Communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiqaries, Genealogists, Etc.  It's motto, quoting Captain Cupple from Dickens's Dombey and Son, which had been published between October 1846 and April 1848, was "When found, make a note of."

The format of the periodical consisted of "Notes" or miscellaneous findings of correspondents that they and the editors considered of interest to the readership, and "Queries", and responses to queries, which formed the bulk of the publication.

Because of its frequent publication, and the question and answer nature of the contents, the magazine may be considered a print analogy to a moderated Internet newsgroup, or an early form of social media.

In 2011 the magazine was published as an academic journal by Oxford University Press.

 "The articles are typically much longer than they were during the journal's early years, though they are still shorter than those of the typical academic journal. In addition, the 'Notes' now far outweigh the 'Queries', and book reviews have also been introduced. The focus is now almost entirely on literature" (Wikipedia article on Notes and Queries, accessed 06-05-2011).

In 1850 the daily circulation of The Times of London newspaper reached 38,000.

Journalist and politician Henry Jarvis Raymond and former banker George Jones founded The New-York Daily Times.

The newspaper changed its name to The New York Times in 1857.

On December 22, 1855 the Illustrated London News issued its "Christmas Supplement." Pages [729]-736 consisted of an an 8-page insert printed on somewhat thicker paper than the regular issues of the newspaper, containing a full-color cover and 3 additional full-page color images printed from woodblocks by George Leighton, who had apprenticed with George Baxter. Each color print was credited "George C. Leighton Red Lion Square." Two of the images were "after Sir John Gilbert," one "after 'Phiz'," and one "after G. Thomas."  The remainder of the "Christmas Supplement" (Vol. XXVII, No. 776, pp. [737]-752), was printed in black and white.

"John Gilbert. . .was the most prolific graphic artist of his day. He drew for Punch and for the London Journal, but  the greatest portion of his work was done for the Illustrated London News, for which he is reputed to have made 30,000 drawings, at one period providing two-thirds of all their illustrations. The deadlines inherent to weekly journalism required Gilbert to produce his pictures with great speed, and it is said that he could make a full-page drawing directly on the wood block while a messenger waited. When particular speed was necessary he could even unscrew the individual squares of wood which constituted a large block and send the finished parts to the engraver piecemeal without seeing the whole design until it was printed" (Friedman, Color Printing in England 1486-1870 [1978] No. 78).

Leighton's production of these first color images proved that color printing could be done in high volume to meet the high circulation of the Illustrated London News, and at comparatively low cost. "The designs were engraved as woodcuts in the ordinary way, and the impressions from them coloured by etched tone blocks; both blocks and colouring are extremely crude, but the idea caught on with the public and Leighton could not produce the plates fast enough to satisfy the demand" (Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers [1910] 147). 

"This was the launch of coloured journalism, a revolution still continuing and one which will not be complete until daily newspapers are in full colour throughout. In addition to the title page Leighton produced for the supplement a convivial Christmas scene entitled 'Returning from Church' and two other full -page colour prints" (Gascoigne, Milestones in colour printing 1457-1859 [1997] 52, plate 20).

In August 1858 Leighton became the printer and publisher of the Illustrated London News. He continued color printing from wood blocks, or wood blocks combined with metal cuts, until the 1880s, when the process was replaced by chromolithography. 

Richard Chenevix Trench, Dean of Westminster, published On some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries. Being the Substance of two Papers read before the Philological Society, Nov. 5 and November 19, 1857. Trench's speeches laid down the desiderata for a new English dictionary based on historical principles.  Two months later the Philological Society resolved that A New English Dictionary, as it was first called, should be compiled, readers were called for, and the project began.

In 1860 Trench published a revised and enlarged second edition of his pamphlet, including "A Letter to the Author from Herbert Coleridge, Esq. on the Progress and Prospects of the Society's New English Dictionary."

Isabella Mary Beeton, published through the firm of S.O. Beeton, owned by her husband Samuel Orchart Beeton, Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management Comprising information for the Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper and Under House-Maids, Lady’s-Maid, Maid-of-all-Work, Laundry-Maid, Nurse and Nurse-Maid, Monthly Wet and Sick Nurses, etc. etc.—also Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Memoranda: with a History of the Origin, Properties, and Uses of all Things Connected with Home Life and Comfort.

Intended as a guide of reliable information about every aspect of running a house for the aspirant middle classes, its 2,751 entries on 1,112 pages included in addition to 900 recipes and a wealth of cooking advice, tips on how to deal with servants' pay and children's health. Many of the recipes were illustrated with colored engravings, and it was also one of the first cookbooks to show recipes in the modern format with all the ingredients listed at the start, a format that Mrs. Beeton borrowed from Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845) along with some of the recipes. However, the Beetons never claimed that the book's contents were original. and Mrs. Beeton may perhaps be designated more accurately as its compiler and editor, rather than its author, as many passages were not in her own words.

The work first appeared in a series of 24 monthly parts issued as supplements to the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine published by Samuel O. Beeton. Previously portions of the text had appeared as columns on such topics as "Cooking, Pickling and Preserving,"  "The Management of Children," etc. in the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, to which Isabella began contributing after her marriage to Samuel Beeton in 1856.  The edition in book form was "one of the major publishing success stories of the nineteenth century, selling over 60,000 copies in its first year of publication in 1861, and nearly two million by 1868" (Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management. Abridged Edition, edited with an Introduction and Notes by Nicola Humble [2000] viii).

On November 24, 1859 Charles Darwin issued through the London publisher, John Murray, his book entitled On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. 

The idea of species evolution can be traced as far back as the ancient Greek belief in the "great chain of being". Darwin's great achievement was to make this centuries-old "underground" concept acceptable to the scientific community and educated readers by cogently arguing for the existence of a viable mechanism— natural selection— by which new species evolve over vast periods of time.  Darwin's work contained only a single illustration- a branching evolutionary tree, the first known presketch of which appears in Darwin's notebooks in 1839.

Though Darwin stated his case for evolution by natural selection persuasively and in the most diplomatic of tones, the work evoked a storm of controversy, causing Darwin to revise it through six editions during his lifetime. Since its publication the scientific evidence supporting evolution by natural selection has reached a massive—even overwhelming— preponderance, yet the controversy over evolution has never abated.

There is only one issue of the first edition of On the Origin of Species, and although three cloth binding and advertisement variants have been identified, no priority has been established. 1250 copies were printed, of which about 1,170 were available for sale; the remainder consisted of 12 author's copies, 41 review copies, 5 copyright copies, and "Darwin required ninety copies to be sent as presentations to friends, family, and scientists [Correspondence, 8: 554-6]" (Kohler & Kohler, see below, 333). Following Darwin's instructions, these presentation copies were sent out by the publisher, usually inscribed "From the Author" by the publisher's clerk.  The book was offered to booksellers two days earlier on November 22, and oversubscribed by 250 copies causing John Murray to propose a new edition immediately.

On the Origin of Species is undoubtedly the most famous book in the history of the life sciences, and one of the world's most famous books on any subject. It is also perhaps the most published book in the history of science and the most translated book originally published in English. As a result of this fame, a great deal of historical research has been concentrated on this work. Early in 2009 Cambridge University Press published The Cambridge Companion to the "Origin of Species," edited by Michael Ruse and Robert J. Richards. Most pertinent to book collecting and book history is the excellent chapter on "The Origin of Species as a Book" by Michèle Kohler and Chris Kohler.

Among the many very informative details the Kohlers include, of particular interest to the history of collecting rare books in the history of science is their observation that the first edition may have first been offered as collectable "rare book" by Bernard Quaritch Ltd in 1903 for £2-10-0, "a premium on the price of a new copy, not a discount." (p. 345). They also observe that the price of the first edition remained essentially static in the rare book trade until it began to rise in the 1920s, after which it very gradually moved upward. When I first opened my shop at the beginning of 1971 the price of a fine copy of the first edition in the original cloth was $1000. At this time the work was relatively common, and there were usually several copies of the first edition on the market at one time.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) No. 593.

The first fascicule (A-Aanhaling) of the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (English: "Dictionary of the Dutch language") was published in The Hague in 1863. This became the largest dictionary in the world in print, eventually containing over 430,000 entries of Dutch words from 1500 to 1921 in 43 volumes and close to 50,000 pages. The last fasciculde (Zuid-Zythum) was published in 1998. Three supplements containing modern Dutch words were published in 2001.

Since January 27, 2007, the dictionary has been available online. There is no charge for access but registration is required.

Osman Zeki Bey, an Ottoman calligrapher, opened his printing office called Matbaa-i Osmaniye in Constantinople. Osman Zeki Bey was the first printer authorized by the Ottoman Palace to print the Qur'an (Koran).

Kuran-Burcoglu, "Osman Zeki Bey and his Printing Office the Matbaa-i-Osmaniye, Sadgrove" (ed) History of Printing and Publishing the Languages and Countries of the Middle East (2005) 35-58.

Russian chemist Dimitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev (also romanized Mendeleyev or Mendeleef; Russian: Дми́трий Ива́нович Менделе́ев) published "Sootnoshenie svoistv s atomnym vesom elementov [Relation of the properties to the atomic weights of the elements]" in volume one of Zhurnal russkago khimicheskago oishchestra, 59-78 published in St. Petersburg by Tovarishchestvo ‘Obshchestvennaia Pol’za’.

This was probably the earliest published report of his discovery of the periodic law and the first publication of a periodic table of the elements in the modern sense. The periodic table appeared on p. 70 of Mendeleev’s paper.

It has been demonstrated that this printing of the periodic table was made from the same setting of type as two single-sheet printings (with legends in French and Russian), which Mendeleev apparently circulated privately among his colleagues in Russia and abroad; Mendeleev’s manuscript copy-text for this setting of the table is dated February 18, 1869 O.S., corresponding to March 1, 1869 N.S. The same setting was used again for the printing of the table that appeared in Mendeleev’s book Osnovy khimii (1869). It is likely that the journal version was printed prior to the book version, since scientific discoveries of this type were usually announced first in journals.

According to the preface to the fifth edition of Osnovy khimii (translated into English in 1891), Mendeleev discovered the periodic law in 1869 during the time he was engaged in writing the first edition of that work.

“Mendeleev himself summarized the studies that had brought him to the periodic law in a later edition of Osnovy khimii, in which he commented on ‘four aspects of matter’ [isomorphism; relation of specific volumes of similar compounds or elements; composition of their compound salts; relations of atomic weights of elements] representing the measurable properties of elements and their compounds. . . . Since the periodic law was dependent upon the quantitative relation between atomic weight, as an independent variable, and its physical and chemical properties, Mendeleev in 1870 took up the problem of developing an entire ‘natural system of elements.’ He employed deduction to reach the boldest and most far-reaching logical consequences of the law that he had discovered, so that he might, by verification of these consequences, confirm the law itself. . . . The Osnovy khimii was finished in February 1871. . . . In March 1871, two years after his discovery of the law, Mendeleev first named it ‘periodic’ ” (Dictionary of Scientific Biography). 

Horblit, One Hundred Books Famous in Science (1964) no. 74.

American anthropologist, historian, naturalist, and writer George Bird Grinell became founding editor and publisher of Forest and Stream magazine.

"It was dedicated to the conservation of wild life, induced the birth of the National Association of Audubon Societies, sponsored the National Park Movement, the U. S.- Canada treaty on migratory birds, lately the Migratory Bird Sanctuary Bill in Congress" (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,739586,00.html, accessed 01-18-2009).

In 1875 Frank Shepard, a salesman for a Chicago legal publisher, invented the Shepard's legal citation system. In the same year, Shepard designed and published the first of his many citation books, Illinois Citations.

"In legal research, Shepard's Citations is a citator, a list of all the authorities citing a particular case, statute, or other legal authority. The verb Shepardizing refers to the process of consulting Shepard's to see if a case has been overturned, reaffirmed, questioned, or cited by later cases. Although the name is trademarked, it is also used informally by legal professionals to describe citators in general—for example, Westlaw's similar tool called Key Cite" (Wikipedia article on Shepard's Citations, accessed 11-30-2012).

On June 30, 1875 the New York Tribune published a series of 36 relief blocks on its front page showing the targets at an International Rifle Match in Dublin, Ireland.

The blocks were produced in New York from target coordinates transmitted over the Atlantic telegraph. These were the first significant series of illustrations published in a daily newspaper.

Scottish lexicographer and philologist James Murray, working in a corrugated out-building on the grounds of Mill Hill School, in Mill Hill, London, called "The Scriptorium, " began the process of accumulating and organizing the data for what became known as the Oxford English Dictionary.

In the summer of 1884, Murray and his family moved to a large house on the Banbury Road in north Oxford.  There Murray had a second corrugated iron Scriptorium lined with bookshelves and 1,029 pigeon-holes for quotation slips built in the back garden— a larger building than the first, with more storage space for the ever-increasing number of slips being sent to Murray and his team. Anything addressed to ‘Mr Murray, Oxford’ would always find its way to him, and such was the volume of post sent by Murray and his team that the Post Office erected a special post box outside Murray’s house.  Each day Murray received 1000 quotations from contributors to the A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles.

Murray eventually accumulated 3,500,000 quotations sent in by contributors, each on an individual slip of paper.

Twenty-three years after the project began, the first fascicule of  A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society was published, under the editorship of James Murray. 

The 352-page volume, covering words from A to Ant, cost 12s.6d or U.S.$3.25. The total sales of this fascicule were 4000 copies. The dictionary was complete in 125 fascicules, the last of which was published on April 19, 1928. The name Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was first used for the work in 1895.

Ottmar Mergenthaler's Linotype composing machine was first used by the New York Daily Tribune newspaper on page four of its issue of July 3, 1886. The parts composed by the Linotype can be distinguished from the hand-set type because of a single wrong-font bold face apostrophe. This appears in only three of the stories in columns two and three of the page.

Mechanical composing machines resulted in greatly increased production speed, and lowered typesetting cost, resulting in longer newspapers. Because of the time involved in hand-typesetting, and constant deadlines to be met, before the Linotype no newspaper consisted of more than eight pages.

Schlesinger, ed., The Biography of Ottmar Mergenthaler, Inventor of the Lintotype (1989) 113-116, with a full-size facsimile of page 4 of the July 3, 1886 issue of the newspaper folded into the volume. Schlesinger, who was an experienced Linotype operator, discovered the first published typesetting done on the Linotype, as the the New York Daily Tribune quietly introduced the new technology without an announcement.

The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, an international agreement governing copyright, was ratified in Berne, Switzerland.

"The Berne Convention was developed at the instigation of Victor Hugo of the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale. Thus it was influenced by the French "right of the author" (droit d'auteur), which contrasts with the Anglo-Saxon concept of "copyright" which only dealt with economic concerns. Under the Convention, copyrights for creative works are automatically in force upon their creation without being asserted or declared. An author need not "register" or "apply for" a copyright in countries adhering to the Convention. As soon as a work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is automatically entitled to all copyrights in the work and to any derivative works, unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them or until the copyright expires. Foreign authors are given the same rights and privileges to copyrighted material as domestic authors in any country that signed the Convention."

Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, published in New York from 1887 to 1889, contained biographical information about thousands of people (some famous, some more obscure) in American history.

"But thirty years after the Cyclopedia's initial publication, questions began to be raised about its reliability. . . . To date over 200 suspicious entries have been flagged. But due to the enormity of the work it's doubtful that all of the false information it contains will ever be identified" (Museumofhoaxes.com, accessed 11-21-2008).

•  
  • Barnhart, John Hendley. "Some Fictitious Botanists." Journal of the New York Botanical Garden 20 (September 1919): 171-81.
  • O'Brien, Frank M. "The Wayward Encyclopedias", New Yorker, XII (May 2, 1936), pp. 71-74.
  • Schindler, Margaret Castle. "Fictitious Biography." American Historical Review 42 (1937), pp. 680-90.
  • Dobson, John Blythe. "The Spurious Articles in Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography—Some New Discoveries and Considerations." Biography 16(4) 1993: 388-408.

In 1887 the New York Daily Tribune newspaper published the first book typeset by Linotype, The Tribune Book of Open-Air Sports. Only the title page of this 500 page book was printed from hand-set type.

On the verso of the title page was printed two lines set in small nonpareil capitals and small caps:

"This Book is Printed Without Type, being the First Product in Book Form of the Mergenthaler Machine which wholly Superceds the Use of Movable Type."

At this time the typesetting machine was not yet known as the Linotype.

About 1900 Glasgow publishers of miniature books David Bryce & Son issued a miniature edition of the Qu'ran (Koran) with illuminated opening pages, 2.5 x 1.9 cm. It was sold with a metal locket and a magnifying glass. Many copies were supplied to Indian and other Muslim soldiers fighting for the British in World War I, and also served as talismans.

"The production of miniature Korans in manuscript has a long tradition, but the printing of them in this [miniature] form had to await the arrival of photolithographic techniques in the late 19th century. Such Korans were published in Delhi in 1892 and Istanbul c. 1899, but the one which seems to have achieved the widest circulation is this Scottish edition. It was one of a long series of miniature books produced by David Bryce and Sons. All the copies were issued with metal lockets and magnifying glasses. Many were supplied to Indian and other Muslim soldiers fighting for the British in the First World War, and served also as talismans’ (Hanebutt-Benz, Glass, Roper (eds) Middle Eastern Languages and the Print Revolution: A cross-cultural encounter. A catalogue and companion to the Exhibition at Gutenberg-Museum Mainz,[2002] No. 79, p. 490).

An "almost legendary title published by Bryce … The bindings vary from richly gilt-stamped red or black morocco with gilt edges to plain stiff wrappers and yellow edges . . . (Bondy, Miniature Books [1981] 111–2).

In The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Book 4, Chapter 53) T. E. Lawrence wrote:

"[Auda] told me later, in strict confidence, that thirteen years before he had bought an amulet Koran for one hundred and twenty pounds and had not since been wounded. . . . The book was a Glasgow reproduction, costing eighteen pence; but Auda’s deadliness did not let people laugh at his superstition." 

Simon Beattie, Recent Acquisitions. List prepared for the 46th California International Antiquarian Book Fair, San Francisco, February 2013, No. 23.

Lord Northcliffe founded the Daily Mail. It soon achieved a daily circulation of 1,000,000. "The Daily Mail was Britain's first daily newspaper aimed at the newly literate 'lower-middle class market resulting from mass education, combining a low retail price with plenty of competitions, prizes and promotional gimmicks" . . . . It was, from the outset, a newspaper for women, being the first to provide features especially for them, and is the only British newspaper whose readership is more than 50% female" (Wikipedia article on the Daily Mail, accessed 02-15-2012).

Bookseller Halsey William Wilson of Minneapolis published the first issue of the Cumulative Book Index. 

"As a bookseller, Wilson had to constantly search through publishers' catalogs in order to keep track of currently published books that his customers might want. It was tedious and time-consuming work that prompted him to long for a comprehensive, up-to-date index of published works. He eventually decided to create such an index himself. What made the concept work economically was Wilson's idea to keep the publication current by placing each entry on a printer's "slug," which could then be later sorted with slugs from new entries. It may have been an obvious solution to someone who had experience as a job printer, but it was a revolutionary concept in bibliographical publishing. In February 1898 Wilson first published Cumulative Book Index, a comprehensive alphabetic list of currently published books in English, featuring the key elements of future Wilson indexes: the listing of author, title, and subject. The work sold for $1 to 300 subscribers, who would then receive periodically updated versions."

Austrian physician and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud issued Die Traumdeutung through the publisher Franz Deuticke in Leipzig and Vienna. This work on The Interpretation of Dreams has been called the last great original work in science or medicine to appear first as a monograph rather than as an article or series of articles published in scientific or medical journals.

The volume is dated 1900 on the title page but Freud's presentation copy to his close friend Wilhelm Fleiss bears the date 24 October 1899 on the title page. "In a letter to Fliess dated 27 October 1899 Freud thanked Fliess for his 'kind words in response to my sending you the dream book,' and noted that 'it has not yet been issued; only our two copies have so far seen the light of day.'

Jones, Sigmund Freud I, 395 states that the book 'actually published on November 4, 1899, but the publisher chose to put the date 1900 on the title page' " (Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine [1991] no. F33).

Bookseller and bibliographer Halsey William Wilson of Minneapolis published the first issue of the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature.

In 1907 engineer Robert Goldschmidt and Belgian author, entrepreneur, visionary, lawyer and peace activist Paul Otlet published "Sur une forme nouvelle du livre-- le livre microphotographique" in l'Institut international de bibliographie bulletin. In this paper they "proposed the livre microphotographique as a way to alleviate the cost and space limitations imposed by the codex format. Otlet’s overarching goal was to create a World Center Library of Juridical, Social and Cultural Documentation, and he saw microfiche as way to offer a stable and durable format that was inexpensive, easy to use, easy to reproduce, and extremely compact" (Wikipedia article on Microform, accessed 04-26-2009). 

Using funds supplied by J. Pierpont Morgan, entrepreneur and photographer Edward S. Curtis began publication and sale by subscription in Seattle, Washington, of The North American Indian, Being a Series of Volumes Picturing and Describing the Indians of the United States and Alaska.

The massive work was written and illustrated by Curtis, and edited by anthropologist Frederick Webb Hodge. Volume one contained an introduction by Theodore Roosevelt. The original publication project was intended to occur over five years.  Twenty-three years later the work was finally complete,  in 20 volumes of text and illustrations, and 20 large portfolios, including 723 leaves of photogravure reproductions of photographs.

"This publication follows the nineteenth-century Euro-American tradition of capturing the 'otherness' of indigenous American Indian life in photography and narrative chronicles. It is set apart by its ambitious scale, and by the striking effect of its images, which are essentially contrived reconstructions rather than true documentation.

"Originally planned for five years, the complicated project was slowed by prohibitive expenses. Public reception was mixed. Less than half of 500 projected sets were printed. Scholars, while interested in staff notes on vocabulary and lore, were dubious of Curtis’s methods of observation. In the 1970s the photographs began to enjoy a nostalgic revival in reprints, and have had a lasting, if controversial, influence on views of the American Indian" (http://curtis.library.northwestern.edu/curtis/aboutwork.html).

"The lavishly illustrated volumes were printed on the finest paper (Dutch etching stock or Japanese tissue paper) and bound in expensive leather, making the price prohibitive for all but the most avid collectors and libraries.

"Subscriptions started at $3000 on the Van Gelder paper in 1907; by 1924 the base price had risen to $4200.

"Although the plan was to sell 500 sets, it appears that Curtis secured just over 220 subscriptions over the course of the project, and printed less than 300 sets.

"In 1935 the assets of the project were liquidated, and the remaining materials were sold to the Charles Lauriat Company, a rare book dealer in Boston. Lauriat acquired nineteen unsold sets of The North American Indian, thousands of individual prints, sheets of unbound paper, and the handmade copper photogravure plates. The book dealer printed a sales brochure and sold nearly seventy more sets at the reduced price of $1245 each. The sets sold apparently included the nineteen remaining original sets plus additional ones made up from loose sheets and newly printed plates" (http://curtis.library.northwestern.edu/curtis/description.html).

8468 new books were published in the United Kingdom in 1910.

From 1910 to 1913 British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic Bertrand Russell and English mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead published Principia mathematica in three volumes, taking up the task — first attempted in Russell's never completed Principles of Mathematics (1903) — of proving the logical basis of all mathematics by deducing the whole body of mathematical doctrine from a small number of primitive ideas and principles of logical inference. To do so Russell and Whitehead devised a complex but precise system of symbols that enabled them to sidestep the ambiguities of ordinary language, and to give an outstanding exposition of sentential logic.  Russell and Whitehead did not entirely achieve their goal -- certain of their theories and axioms were found to be unsatisfactory-- but their failures inspired further investigation of both their own and rival theories, and possibly contributed more to the development of mathematical logic than their complete success would have done.

Cambridge University Press issued 750 copies of the first volume of this work. Disappointed with the sales of that volume, the publishers reduced the printings of Volumes II and III to 500 copies. Thus the complete set is more difficult to find than copies of Volume I.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1868.

To combat false and misleading claims for circulation, advertisers, advertising agencies, and newspapers founded the Audit Bureau of Circulations. This was the world's first circulation auditing organization.

The Proclamation of the Irish Republic, a broadside roughly 30 x 20 inches in size, was printed in an edition of around 1000 copies on Sunday, April 23, 1916 in advance of the Easter Rising in Ireland, which began on April 24, 1916. The reading of the proclamation by Patrick Pearse outside the General Post Office on Sackville Street (now called O'Connell Street), Dublin's main thoroughfare, marked the beginning of the Rising.

In the Proclamation the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, styling itself the "Provisional Government of the Irish Republic,"proclaimed Ireland's independence from the United Kingdom. 

The proclamation was printed secretly on an old and poorly maintained Wharfedale Stop Cylinder Press in the printing office that had been set up by James Connolly in the basement in the original Liberty Hall in Beresford Place, Dublin. Because of its secret printing problems arose which affected the layout and design. The typesetters, Willie O'Brien, Michael Molloy and Christopher Brady, lacked a sufficient supply of type, and as a result there are various examples of wrong font in the text. The headline of the proclamation, "IRISH REPUBLIC", was also set in a very worn sans serif type, with the right foot of the first capital R defective. 

Roughly 30 copies of the original printing have survived, of which eight are preserved in Dublin institutions, and three in the United States.

Various copies have appeared in the sale rooms since 1998:

5 December 1998. Mealy’s, Castlecomer, Co. Kilkenny. £26,000.

1 January 2001. Whyte’s, Dublin. £52,000.

11 December 2003. Sotheby’s, London (L03409). Lot 5. £69,600.

8 July 2004. Sotheby’s, London (L04407). Lot 9. £123,200.

16 December 2004. Sotheby’s, London (L04413), Lot 35. £168,000.

12 June 2005. Whyte’s, Dublin. €125,000.

12 April 2006. James Adam & Sons, Dublin. Lot 404. €200,000.

17 April 2007. James Adam & Sons, Dublin. Lot 409, €240,000.

15 April 2008. Adam’s and Mealy’s, Dublin. Lot 587. €360,000.

11 December 2008. Sotheby’s, New York (N08501). Lot 179. Estimate $180,000 to $275,000. No sale.

28 April 2009. Adam’s and Mealy’s, Dublin. Lot 630. €220,000.

The best account that I have found of the complex, yet well documented, printing of the Proclamation, and of the numerous reprints which may easily be confused with the originals, is in the Typefoundry blog entry of January 6, 2010 of James Mosley of the Typography and Graphic Communication Department at the University of Reading (accessed 07-26-2011).

In 1925 Robert B. Goldschmidt and Paul Otlet published "La Conservation et la diffusion internationale de la pensée" as publication no. 144 of the Institut international de bibliographie (Brussels). This work described their plans for a massive library where each volume existed as master negatives and positives on microform, and where items were printed on demand for interested patrons.

Adolf Hitler published Mein Kampf in Munich, the first volume of which he dictated in prison to his associate Rudolf Hess after the abortive Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, November 1923.

One of the most influential books ever published, and possibly the most evil, the publication history, as well as the contents of this work, continue to be intensively reviewed by scholars, and read by people of different political persuasions, including extremists. The Wikipedia article on Mein Kampf contains unusually thorough documentation concerning its publication history.

Though publication of Mein Kampf was banned in some countries in 1947, it continued to sell widely in print in many languages, and according to a New York Times article published in November 2011, it had sold over 70 million copies by 2008.  It was also freely distributed on the Internet.  In 2011, with the pending expiration of its copyright, issues were raised concerning the dangers of allowing this text to circulate freely, and how it might be used to counteract prejudice and Holocaust denial, if that would be possible: 

"In 1947, Austria adopted the Verbotsgesetz — or “Prohibition Act” — banning the Nazi Party and criminalizing the celebration, promotion, or adulation of Nazi ideology; in the 1990s, it was amended to prohibit Holocaust denial. (It was under this law that the English writer David Irving was jailed a few years ago for denying the existence of the gas chambers.) Distributing and displaying Nazi paraphernalia is forbidden here. Germany, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Lithuania — all these countries also criminalize revisionism and restrict various forms of speech and publications about the Holocaust. And for nearly 70 years, the German state of Bavaria, which holds the copyright for “Mein Kampf,” has fought heartily against the book’s publication in any country where it is possible to fight it.  

But now the rationale behind these restrictions is being questioned. While they may have helped limit the widespread distribution of “Mein Kampf” in Europe, repressive tactics of this kind have not aged well in the Internet era. (The book was never fully blocked anyway: in the 1980s, the U.S. Army sold it in some of its “Stars and Stripes” shops across Germany. And libraries often held copies.) Preventing a book’s publication today is largely a symbolic move.  

“Mein Kampf” is widely available, in its entirety, across the Web. It has been a hit in Japan and Turkey in recent years; it has sold briskly in South America and the Middle East; and it has shown up, like a nefarious inspiration, in such ugly places as the rantings of the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik. By 2008, an estimated 70,000,000 copies had been put into circulation since the book was first published in 1925, according to HatePrevention.org, a consortium of academics and activists. In other words, the restrictions on its publication may have enabled a kind of willful ignorance, a means of not recognizing the continued impact of the book’s ideas on society.  

"And so as Europe faces the end of the copyright on one of the most painful texts of the 20th century, some people now believe that the best course of action is not to extend the ban, but to publish 'Mein Kampf' with extensive annotations that explain how the book was used and what it wrought — that recognize its continued presence. 'Our idea is a zero-censorship effort,' says Philippe Coen, a French attorney at the forefront of HatePrevention.org, which organized the recent conference in Paris. He, like Dreyfus, favors the pedagogical approach to the publication of Hitler’s manifesto" (http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/the-return-of-mein-kampf/?nl=opinion&emc=tyb1, accessed 12-14-2011).

Television. The World’s First Television Journal, began publication in London. (See Readings 5.5 and 5.6.)

In 1930 prolific American avant-garde writer Bob Brown (Robert Carlton Brown), published an essay entitled "The Readies" in the international avant-garde journal transition,  issued from Paris, no. 19/20, 167-73, calling for a new reading machine, and new reading material for it called "The Readies."  Brown intended these innovations as ways for literature to keep up with the advanced reading practices of a cinema-viewing public, as epitomized in the then new expression for sound films, "the talkies." The first feature film originally presented as a talkie had been The Jazz Singer, released in October 1927. 

"The word 'readies' suggests to me a moving type spectacle, reading at the speed rate of the day with the aid of a machine, a method of enjoying literature in a manner as up-to-date as the lively talkes. In selecting the "The Readies' as title for what I have to say about modern reading and writing I hope to catch the reader in a receptive progressive mood. I ask him to forget for the moment the existing medievalism of the BOOK (God bless it, it's staggering on its last leg and about to fall) as a conveyer of reading matter. I request the reader to fix his mental eye for a moment on the ever-present future and contemplate a reading machine which will revitalize this interest in the Optical Art of Wrting.

"In our aeroplane age radio is rushing in television, tomorrow it will be commonplace. All the arts are having their faces lifted, painting (the moderns), sculpture (Brancusi), music (Antheil), architecture (zoning law), drama (Strange Interlude), dancing (just look around you tonight) writing (Joyce, Stein, Cummings, Hemingway, transition). Only the reading half of Literature lags behind, stays old-fashioned, frumpish, beskirted. Present-day reading methods are as cumbersone as they were in the time of Caxton and Jimmy-the-Ink. Though we have advanced from Gutenberg's movable type through the linotype and monotype to photo-composing we still consult the book in its original form as the only oracular means we know for carrying the word mystically to the eye. Writing as been bottled up in books since the start. It is time to pull out the stopper.

"To continue reading at today's speed I must have a machine. A simple reading machine which I can carry or move around and attach to any old electric light plug and read hundred thousand word novels in ten minutes if I want to, and I want to. A machine as handy as a portable phonograph, typewriter or radio, compact, minute operated by electricity, the printing done microscopically by the new photographic process on a transparent tough tissue roll which carries the contents of a book and is no bigger than a typewriter ribbon, a roll like a minature serpentine that can be put in a pill box. This reading film unrolls beneath a narrow magnifying glass four or give inches long set in a reading slit, the glass brings up the otherwise unreadable type to comfortable reading size, and the read is rid at last of the cumbersome book, the inconvenience of holding its bulk, turning its pages, keeping them clean, jiggling hs weary eyes back and forth in the awkward pursuit of words from the upper left hand corner to the lower right, all over the vast confusing reading surface of a page. . . .

"My machine is equipped with controls so the reading record can be turned back or shot ahead, a chapter read or the happy ending anticipated. The magnifying glass is so set that it can be moved nearer to or father from the type, so the reader may browse in 6 points, 8, 10, 12, 16 or any size that suits him. Many books remain unread today owing to the unsuitable size of type in which they are printed. A number of readers cannot stand the strain of small type and other intellectual prowlers are offended by Great Primer. The reading machine allows free choice in type-point, it is not a fixed arbitrary bound object but an adaptable carrier of flexible, flowing reading matter. . . .

"The machine is equipped with all modern improvements. By pressing a button the roll slows down so an interesting part can be read lesurely, over and over again if need be, or by speeding up, a dozen books can skimmed through in an afternoon without soiling the fingers or losing a dust wrapper. . . .

"The material advantages of my reading machine are obvious, paper saving by condensation and elimination of waste margin space which alone takes up a fifth or sixth of the bulk of the present-day book. Ink saving in proportion, a much smaller surface needs to be covered. . . Binding will be unnecessary, paper pill boxes are produced at the fraction of the cost of cloth cases. Manual labor will be minimized. Reading will be cheap and independent of advertising which today carries the cost of the cheap reading matter purveyed exclusively in the interests of the advertiser" (167-69).

Brown also intended his device as one way of achieving "The Revolution of the Word," as called for in the manifesto published in issue 16/17 of transition by its editor Eugene Jolas in 1929. Later in 1930 Brown privately published a 52-page pamphlet entitled The Readies in an edition of 150 or 300 copies. The imprint of the pamphlet read Bad Ems: Roving Eye Press. (It is possible that the publishing location was a joke.) The pamphlet represented an expansion with examples given, of Brown's essay from transition, a revised version of which it republished as chapter 3.

Written before anyone imagined electronic computers, and even longer before anyone imagined a hand-held electronic computer, one goal of Brown's vision of new media for reading was saving space, paper and ink through media more compact than traditional printed books. Though he could not foresee how the changes would actually occur, he was also an extremely early predictor of changes to the traditional codex book that would occur sixty years later with electronic publishing. In the pre-electronic computer era Brown, like Emanuel Goldberg and Vannevar Bush, saw the future of of information primarily in the context of film and microfilm, and in developing more verbally compact means of communication. While Goldberg and Bush were focussed on developing more efficient means of information storage and retrieval, Brown was focussed on the creative aspects of new writing and new forms of communication with the reader:

"This important manifesto, on a par with André Breton's Surrealist manifestos or Tristan Tzara's Dadaist declarations, includes plans for an electric reading machine and strategies for preparing the eye for mechanized reading. There are instructions for preparing texts as “readies” and detailed quantitative explanations about the invention and mechanisms involved in this peculiar machine.

"In the generic spirit of avant-garde manifestos, Brown writes with enthusiastic hyperbole about the machine's breathtaking potential to change how we read and learn. In 1930, the beaming out of printed text over radio waves or in televised images had a science fiction quality—or, for the avant-garde, a fanciful art-stunt feel. Today, Brown’s research on reading seems remarkably prescient in light of text-messaging (with its abbreviated language), electronic text readers, and even online books like the digital edition of this volume. Brown's practical plans for his reading machine, and his descriptions of its meaning and implications for reading in general, were at least fifty years ahead of their time.  . . .

"Brown’s reading machine was designed to 'unroll a televistic readie film' in the style of modernist experiments; the design also followed the changes in reading practices during the first quarter of the twentieth century. Gertrude Stein understood that Brown’s machine, as well as his processed texts for it, suggested a shift toward a different way to comprehend texts. That is, the mechanism of this book, a type of book explicitly built to resemble reading mechanisms like ticker-tape machines rather than a codex, produced—at least for Stein—specific changes in reading practices.  

"In Brown’s Readie, punctuation marks become visual analogies. For movement we see em-dashes (—) that also, by definition, indicate that the sentence was interrupted or cut short. These created a 'cinemovietone' shorthand system. The old uses of punctuation, such as employment of periods to mark the end of a sentence, disappear. Reading machine-mediated text becomes more like watching a continuous series of flickering frames become a movie" (Afterward from: The Readies, edited with an Afterward by Craig Saper, Houston: Rice University Press,[2009] accessed 05-23-2010).

After Brown published The Readies authors in the transition circle sent  him pieces intended for publication on the hypothetical machine. In 1931 he self-published these as a 208-page book, Readies for Bob Brown's Machine, in an edition of 300 copies also from the Roving Eye Press, but this time from Cagnes-sur-mer. That work, which contained contributions by 42 authors including Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, and Paul Bowle's first appearance in a book, contained two crude illustrations of a prototype of Brown's reading machine — a wooden contraption that hardly embodied machine-age sleekness; part of it looked a bit like a waffle iron. It is unclear whether Brown's machine ever operated; probably it did not. What matters more are Brown's futuristic ideas.

——————

♦ Following the "all digital" policy of Rice University Press since it was re-organized in 2006, the Rice edition of The Readies was available as a free download from their website, or as print-on-demand from QOOP.com. When I clicked on the purchase button on 05-23-2010, I was given the following purchase options at QOOP.com:

"+Hard Bound Laminate for $25.85

"+Hard Bound - Dust Jacket for $32.35

"+Wire-O for $16.00

"+eBook for $7.00."

In 1931 the U. S. Congress established the talking-book program, intended to help blind adults who couldn’t read print.

This program was called "Books for the Adult Blind Project." The American Foundation for the Blind developed the first talking books in 1932. One year later the first reproduction machine began the process of mass publishing talking books.

In a paper entitled "Sources of Information on Specific Subjects," (Engineering 137 [1934], 85-6), British mathematician, librarian and documentalist at the Science Museum in London Samuel C. Bradford published Bradford's Law, also known as  "Bradford's law of scattering" and as the "Bradford distribution," showing the "exponentially diminishing returns of extending a library search."

"In many disciplines this pattern [described by Bradford's Law] is called a Pareto distribution. As a practical example, suppose that a researcher has five core scientific journals for his or her subject. Suppose that in a month there are 12 articles of interest in those journals. Suppose further that in order to find another dozen articles of interest, the researcher would have to go to an additional 10 journals. Then that researcher's Bradford multiplier bm is 2 (i.e. 10/5). For each new dozen articles, that researcher will need to look in bm times as many journals. After looking in 5, 10, 20, 40, etc. journals, most researchers quickly realize that there is little point in looking further.

"Different researchers have different numbers of core journals, and different Bradford multipliers. But the pattern holds quite well across many subjects, and may well be a general pattern for human interactions in social systems. Like Zipf's law, to which it is related, we do not have a good explanation for why it works. But knowing that it does is very useful for librarians. What it means is that for each specialty it is sufficient to identify the core publications' for that field and only stock those. Very rarely will researchers need to go outside that set" (Wikipedia article on Bradford's Law, accessed 02-21-2012).

Allen Lane founded Penguin Books in London to bring high quality, paperback fiction and non-fiction to the mass market.

An Exhibition of Printing at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge was planned for May 6 to June 23, 1940, taking the year 1940 as the quincentenary of Gutenberg's invention of printing as had been done in 1840 for the quatercentenary, in 1740 for the tricentennial, and in 1640 for the bicentennial. Exhibitions of this kind normally require years of advance planning, but from the brief account in Nicolas Barker's Stanley Morison (1972) it appears that the prospectus for this exhibition was sent out only at the beginning of March, 1940:

"At the beginning of March a prospectus was circulated to librarians, members of the Bibliographical Scoiety, the Roxburghe Club, and others.

"Though more than half Europe is at present too tragically absorbed in the future of its civilisation to be able to pay much thought to its past, the five-hundredth anniversary of Gutenberg's invention none the less demands to be recognized. The conditions which make it impractical to hold a worthy exhibition in London are happily absent in Cambridge; and plans for stage here a modest tribute to Gutenberg's memory have developed into a resolution to make good the general deficiency with a major exhibition.

"The theme of the exhibition was then set out; a full representation of every aspect of human thought and action served by Gutenberg's invention; 'wherever civilization has called upon the craft of printing from movable type to promote its ends, there is subject matter for this exhibition'.

"The response for the request for loans was conspicuously prompt and generous. Nearly 100 lenders produced over 600 exhibits. . . " (Barker, op. cit., 376-77).

According to Brooke Crutchley, "The Gutenberg Exhbition at Cambridge, 1940," Matrix 12 (1992) 77-82:

"The decision to celebrate the quincentenary of Gutenberg's invention by holding an exhibition in Cambridge in 1940 was largely an act of defiance. The outbreak of war in September 1939 and the swift conquest of Poland were followed by an uneasy quiet in western Europe while armies lined up against each other in preparation for the battle that was to come. Meanwhile the Fitzwilliam Museum had sent its principal treasures to Wales for safe keeping, the windows of King's College chapel were boarded up, civilisation seemed to have been put on ice. An exhibition to show the contribution that printing had made over five hundred years, and would continue to make when the madness was over, might be seen as a challenge to the forces of destruction." 

As a guide and record of the exhibition, an unillustrated catalogue describing 641 items was published by Cambridge University Press and offered for sale for one shilling. On the cover was an emblem symbolizing Gutenberg's type designed by wood engraver Reynolds Stone.

The Foreward to the catalogue read as follows:

"There is no moral to this exhibition. It aims at portraying, as objectively as possible, the uses to which printing from movable type has been put since Gutenberg and his associates invented it five hundred years ago; the spread of knowledge more quickly and accurately than was possible before, the storing of human experience, the providing of entertainment, the simplication of the increasingly complicated business of living. Those books, papers, and other printing have been chosen (so far as the difficulties of the times would permit) which made most effective use of the medium of type; in other words, those which, composed and multiplied, most strongly influenced people and events. Others have been chosen for their illustration of events and trends of particular importance or interest; others again for their intrinsic curiosity as examples of the exploitation of print. All are shewn so far as possible in the original editions in which they were first presented to the world.

"The exhibition has been designed therefore to illustrate the development of man's use of movable type as a tool; its spread from Mainz through the countries of the world, through all the fields of knowledge, through the whole range of man's activities. Running through the story another theme presents itself and draws occasional comment--the development of the actual form of printing. The technical display deals with the old and modern methods fo type-founding and composition, and briefly illustrates the development of type design. That part of the exhibition is education; for the rest, though there is much to learn from it, it does not set out to teach. It is simply an illustration to that proud but unattributed saying: With my twenty-six soldiers of lead I have conquered the world."

Persons involved with organizing the exhibition and writing catalogue entries included writer on typography Beatrice Warde, antiquarian bookseller and writer Percy Muir, typographer John Dreyfus, writer and antiquarian bookseller John Carter, economist and book collector John Maynard Keynes, and scientist, sinologist and historian of science Joseph Needham. According to Sebastian Carter, "Printing & the Mind of Man," Matrix  20 (2000) 172-180, typographer Stanley Morison, typographic advisor to Cambridge University Press, was involved in the planning, but the bulk of the organization of the exhbiition was done by the Assistant University Printer, Brooke Crutchley, helped by John Dreyfus. The largest private lender to the exhibition was stockbroker (later intelligence agent), book collector and writer, Ian Fleming, who had pioneered in collecting influential books, or those which, in the words of Sebastian Carter, had "started something."

Among several innovative aspects of the exhibition was a display of books published in the year 1859, including, among others, Darwin On the Origin of Species, Mill On Liberty, Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management.

The catalogue did not appear until June 1940, after the exhibition had been closed on May 16, only 10 days after it had opened, because of war. It was reprinted in the following month. In my copy of the second printing the following statement appeared:

"As this catalogue was about to go to press, a sudden change in the war situation made it appear advisable to close the Exhibition when it had been open only ten days. The catalogue was printed off, nevertheless, so that copies might be sent to all who had helped and others be available for sale. The demand proved greater than had been expected, and this reprint was in hand in which a few errors and oversights have been made good."

When I originally wrote this entry for From Cave Paintings to the Internet on October 25, 2011, I had never previously seen a copy of the 1940 exhibition catalogue, in spite of my roughly 50 years experience in the world of books. Until reading the catalogue I was unaware how much this forgotten exhibition held early in World War II had influenced the 1963 exhibition, Printing and the Mind of Man. The overlap in choices between the 1940 and 1963 catalogues is significant, especially as Carter & Muir were heavily involved in both exhibitions held 23 years apart, and some of the same lenders, especially Ian Fleming, contributed notable items to both exhibitions. It would be useful some day to compare the selections of the two exhibitions carefully.  Before doing that I would observe that the organizers of the 1940 exhibition must have been well aware of the significance of Hitler's writings leading up to World War II, as they included the  February 24, 1920 Munich Auszug aus dem Programm der national-sozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei as item 620 in their exhibition, and Hitler's Mein Kampf as item number 623.

Mathematical Tables and Other Aids to Computation (MTAC), the world’s first computing journal, began publication in Washington, D.C.

At this time mathematical tables prepared by human computers were the primary calculating aid. The journal reported on the new electromechanical and electronic “aids to computation” as they were developed.

In 1948 the U. S. Army in Germany issued a full-sized edition of the Talmud in Hebrew from Munich and Heidelberg in 19 folio volumes, printed photo-offset from the standard Vilna edition of the Talmud.  This became known as the "Survivor's Talmud." The title page depicted an idyllic Land of Israel above an image of barbed wire surrounding a work camp. Only 100 sets were printed.

The project was the result of an agreement signed in September 1946 by commander in chief, U.S. Occupying Forces in Germany, General Joseph T. McNarney and the Joint Distribution Committee. The edition took longer than expected to produce because of the shortage of paper and the difficulty of finding a complete set of the Talmud in Germany after the Holocaust.  The edition was printed at the Carl Winter Printing Plant in Heidelberg, which had previously printed Nazi propaganda.  This is the sole instance of a national government publishing the Talmud.

The edition contained a dedication in English which stated:

"This edition of the Talmud is dedicated to the United States Army. This army played a major role in the rescue of the Jewish people from total annihilation, and after the defeat of Hitler bore the major burden of sustaining the DPs of the Jewish faith. This special edition of the Talmud published in the very land where, but a short time ago, everything Jewish and of Jewish inspiration was anathema, will remain a symbol of the indestructibility of the Torah. The Jewish DPs will never forget the generous impulses and the unpredented humanitarianism of the American forces, to whom they owe so much.

 "In the name of the Rabinical Organization

 Rabbi Samuel A. Snieg

Chairman and Chief Rabbi of the U.S. Zone"

Mintz & Goldstein, Printing the Talmud from Bomberg to Schottenstein (2005) No. 64, reproducing the title page.

Maurice Wilkes, David Wheeler, and Stanley Gill of Cambridge University issued Report on the Preparation of Programmes for the EDSAC and the Use of the Library of Subroutines. This dittoed document, published for private distribution in a very small number of copies, was the first treatise on software written for an operational stored-program computer. The book described “assemblers” and “subroutines”—segments of programs that are frequently used, so they can be kept in “libraries” and reused as needed in many software applications. The Cambridge group thus introduced the concept of reusable code, one of the principal tools for reducing software bugs and improving the productivity of programmers.

In 1951 this work was published as a conventional hard-cover book, with some changes and a new title by the American publishers Addison-Wesley, coincidentally in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer, with special reference to the EDSAC and the use of a library of subroutines was the first conventionally published book on software. (See Reading 9.4.)

11,638 new books are published in the United Kingdom.

According to Asa Brigg’s The History of British Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Vol. 4, p. 524, newspaper circulation in Britain as a distribution medium for news reached its peak in 1950 and 1954. Thereafter more news was distributed over radio and television than through print.

Edmund Berkeley began publication of Computing Machinery Field, the first journal on electronic computing, and the ancestor of all commercially published periodical publications on computing.

The first three quarterly issues were mimeographed. By the March 1953 issue the title was changed to Computers and Automation.

Having written the entire book on a pay typewriter in the basement of UCLA's Powell Library, Ray Bradbury published the dystopian science fiction novel Fahrenheit 451, named after the temperature at which books are supposed to combust spontaneously. Besides the regular trade edition, the publisher Ballantine Books, issued a limited edition of 200 copies signed by Bradbury and bound in white boards made of "Johns-Manville Quinterra," a fire-proof asbestos material.

"The novel presents a future American society in which the masses are hedonistic, and critical thought through reading is outlawed. The central character, Guy Montag, is employed is a 'fireman' (which, in this future, means 'book burner'). The number '451' refers to the temperature (in Fahrenheit) at which the books burn when the 'Firemen' burn them 'For the good of humanity'. Written in the early years of the Cold War, the novel is a critique of what Bradbury saw as an increasingly dysfunctional American society.

Bradbury's original intention in writing Fahrenheit 451 was to show his great love for books and libraries. "He has often referred to Montag as an allusion to himself" (Wikipedia article on Fahrenheit 451).

♦ François Truffaut and Jean-Louis Richard wrote a screenplay based on the novel, and Truffault directed a film, released in 1966, entitled Fahrenheit 451, starring Julie Christie and Oskar Werner. The film was re-issued on DVD by Universal Studios in 2003.

♦ After publically opposing ebooks for several years, telling The New York Times in 2009 that "that the Internet is a big distraction," in November 2011, at the age of 91, Bradbury authorized an ebook edition of Fahrenheit 451, and several other of his best-selling books. By this date Fahrenheit 451 had sold more than 10 million copies in print, and had been translated into many languages. However, also by this date ebooks comprised 20% of the fiction book market in the U.S. 

Reflecting the obsolescence of mathematical tables as a result of the development of electronic computing, in 1960 Mathematical Tables and Other Aids to Computation (MTAC), the first computing journal or periodical, published by the American Mathematical Society, changed its name to Mathematics of Computation.

The Los Angeles Times newspaper drove Linotype hot metal typesetters with perforated tape created from RCA computers, greatly speeding up typesetting.

The key to this advance was development of a dictionary and a method to automate hyphenation and justification of text in columns. These tasks had taken 40 percent of a manual Linotype operator's time.

Austrian-American economist Fritz Machlup of Princeton published The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States.

In this book Machlup introduced the concept of the knowledge industry. "He distinguished five sectors of the knowledge sector: education, research and development, mass media, information technologies, information services. Based on this categorization he calculated that in 1959 29% per cent of the GNP in the USA had been produced in knowledge industries" (Wikipedia article on Information Society, accessed 04-25-2011).

In 1963 Compugraphic of Brookline, Massachusetts introduced the Linasec I and II, the first general typesetting computers. These automated tape processors produced justified tapes to drive the Linotype machines used in the newspaper industry.

Net production of the Linasec— in excess of 3,600 lines per hour compared to the manually-set 600 lines per hour— enabled newspapers to carry more detailed, late breaking news stories.

The Printing and the Mind of Man exhibition took place in London at the British Museum and at Earls Court Exhibition Centre during a period of only two weeks, from July 16 to July 27, 1963.

The lengthy and complex title of its catalogue, with an emblem and tailpiece designed and engraved by Reynolds Stone, read: Catalogue of a display of printing mechanisms and printed materials arranged to illustrate the history of Western civilization and the means of the multiplication of literary texts since the XV century, organised in connection with the eleventh International Printing Machinery and Allied Trades Exhibition, under the title Printing and the Mind of Man, assembled at the British Museum and at Earls Court, London, 16-27 July 1963. The catalogue described and illustrated with 32 black & white plates, and a color plate reproducing a page from the Mainz Psalter, more than 656 examples of printing and printing technology documenting the influence of print on the development of Western civilization. This exhibition occurred at Earls Court.  The catalogue also described, and illustrated with 16 black & white plates, an exhibition of 163 examples of Fine Printing mounted at the British Museum from July to September 1963.  At the end of their Acknowledgements on p. 9 of the catalogue the Supervisory Committee for the exhibition– librarian Frank Francis, typographer and historian of typography Stanley Morison and writer and antiquarian bookseller John Carter– stated:

"We pay tribute to the organizers of the Gutenberg Quincentenary Exhibition of Printing, assembled at Cambridge in 1940 (and prematurely disassembled because of the risks from enemy bombing). It was our original inspiration for several sections of our display, and its invigorating catalogue has been our constant friend."

Comparison of the 641 items described in the catalogue of 1940 with those described in the catalogue of 1963 show a great deal of overlap, especially as Percy Muir and John Carter, who had been prime movers in the exhibition in 1940, were extensively involved with the exhibition of 1963. The 1963 exhibition and its catalogue were, of course, significant expansions and improvements over the early wartime effort.

The 1963 catalogue was  followed in 1967 by a further-expanded larger format cloth-bound edition edition with a dramatic double-page engraved title by Reynolds Stone, significantly more detailed annotations, and without discussion of "printing mechanisms," entitled Printing and the Mind of Man. A Descriptive Catalogue Illustrating the Impact of Print on the Evolution of Western Civilization, compiled and edited by antiquarian booksellers and bibliographers John Carter and Percy H. Muir, assisted by book historian and writer Nicolas Barker, antiquarian bookseller H.A. Feisenberger, bibliographer Howard Nixon and historian of printing S.H. Steinberg.

This exhibition, and especially the 1967 book based on it, was, and remains, immensely influential on both institutional and private collectors of landmark books that influenced the development of Western Civilization.   

Taking place at the dawn of online searching and the ARPANET, and roughly twenty years before the development of the personal computer, this exhibition and its catalogues may also record the peak of the print-centric view of information before the development of electronic information technology leading to the Internet. The only references to computing in the exhibition and its catalogues were to Napier on logarithms, and to Leibniz's stepped-drum calculator. The exhibition and catalogues included references to the invention of radio, telephone and films, but not to television. 

Sebastian Carter, "Printing & the Mind of Man," Matrix 20 (2000) 172-180.

Systems Development Corporation, Santa Monica, California, developed the first computerized encyclopedia.

Eugene Garfield and the Institute for Scientific Information published the first Science Citation Index in five printed volumes, indexing 613 journals and 1.4 million citations, using the method of citation analysis.

Two years later Science Citation Index became available on magnetic tape.

Canadian educator, philosopher, and media theorist of the University of Toronto Marshall McLuhan published Undertstanding Media: The Extensions of Man.

"In it McLuhan proposed that media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the focus of study — popularly quoted as the medium is the message'. McLuhan's insight was that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself. McLuhan pointed to the light bulb as a clear demonstration of this concept. A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to create spaces during nighttime that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content. McLuhan states that 'a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence.' More controversially, he postulated that content had little effect on society — in other words, it did not matter if television broadcasts children's shows or violent programming, to illustrate one example — the effect of television on society would be identical. He noted that all media have characteristics that engage the viewer in different ways; for instance, a passage in a book could be reread at will, but a movie had to be screened again in its entirety to study any individual part of it.

"The book is the source of the well-known phrase 'The medium is the message'. It was a leading indicator of the upheaval of local cultures by increasingly globalized values. The book greatly influenced academics, writers, and social theorists" (Wikipedia article on Understanding Media, accessed 11-14-2009)

In May 1964 the Central Intelligence Bureau of the Chinese People's Liberation Army issued in Beijing or Tianjin Mao Zedong, Mao Zhu XI Yu Lu (Quotations of Chairman Mao.) This "probably still holds the world record for most copies printed of a single work in under four years (720 million books by the end of 1967)."

See Oliver Lei Han,"Sources and Early Printing History of Chairman Mao’s 'QUOTATIONS',", @The Bibliographical Society of America Bibsite, accessed 11-30-2010).

Here is a description of the first edition adapted from Michael R. Thompson Autumn Miscellany, List 96, accessed 11-30-2010:

"MAO TSE TUNG [MAO ZEDONG]. Mao zhuxi yulu [Chinese, i.e., Quotations of Chairman Mao]. [n.p., probably Beijing: Central Intelligence Bureau of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, May, 1964]. Sixteenmo, with the page size measuring 5 3/8: x 4.” 2, half-title printed in red with blank verso], [2, title printed in green and red with blank verso], [2, portrait of Mao in brown tones, with blank verso], [2, endorsement leaf by Lin Biao with blank verso], 2 (letterpress introduction), 2 (table of contents, listing 30 chapters), 250 pp. The endorsement leaf is in the earliest state, with the misprint in the second character down of the second vertical row from the right. (See Oliver Han Lei, “How Read is the Little Red Book, in the Antiquarian Book Review, November 2003). In the earliest binding of off-white paper wrappers with front cover printed in black and red, and spine printed in red.

"First edition, distinguishable from other editions by its slightly larger paper size, by containing thirty chapters and ending at page 250. Contains the Lin Biao’s endorsement leaf, with three sentences for the diary of Lei Feng, printed letterpress in calligraphic script. The endorsement leaf is lacking in most copies because of political circumstances. Lin Biao, head of National Defense, had risen in power within the Mao hierarchy and was designated to become Mao’s successor. However, rumors surfaced that Lin was planning to assassinate Mao. While never completely proven, they caused Lin to leave suddenly on a military transport for an undisclosed location when their plane was shot down in Mongolia on the evening of September 12, 1971. Subsequently, Mao attempted to eradicate his name from modern history, and the endorsement leaf was ordered to be torn out or defaced in all copies as a sign of loyalty to Mao. Therefore, copies with the endorsement leaf are uncommon.

"The first state was printed in an edition of 50,000-60,000 copies. It was never intended for sale, but was issued to members of the military as inspirational reading. It was only in the second state that the well-known vinyl cover first appeared. By 1967, the book had been translated into more than thirty-six languages and an estimated 720 million copies had been printed. . . ."

The color cover of the July 1965 issue of Fortune magazine was the first magazine cover designed using computer graphics, though the editor and designer made not have been aware of that at the time. The cover reproduced a photograph of graphics displayed on a computer screen. Two color filters made the computer image appear in color.  On p. 2 of the issue the magazine explained their cover as follows:

"This cover is the first in Fortune's thirty-five years to have been executed wholly by machine— a PDP-1 computer manufactured by Digital Equipment Corp., and loaned to Forune by Bolt Beranek & Newman Inc. of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The myriad arrows photographed in upward flight across the machine's oscilloscope symbolize the predominant direction of corporate statistics in 1964, while the large, glowing numeral [500] represents the number of companies catalogued in the Directory of the 500 Largest Industrial Corporations. . . ."

On p. 97, editor, Duncan Norton-Taylor, devoted his monthly column to the cover, writing:

"In the course of events, Fortune's art director, Walter Allner, might have frowned on filling the column at left with an array of abbreviations and figures, for Allner is no man to waste space on uninspired graphics. But these figures are his special brain children. They are the instructions that told a PDP-1 computer how to generate the design on this month's cover. This program was 'written' to Allner's specifications and punched into an eight-channel paper tape by Sanford Libman and John Price, whose interest in art and electronics developed at M.I.T.

"Generating the design on an oscilloscope and photographing required about three hours of computer time and occupied Price, Allner, and Libman until four one morning. Multiple exposure through two filters added color to the electron tube's glow. . . . 

"Walter Allner was born in Dessau, Germany. He studied at the Bauhaus-Dessau under Josef Albers, Vasily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee. . . . 

"Allner confesses to certain misgivings about teaching the PDP-1 computer too much about Fortune cover design, but adds, philosophically: 'If the computer puts art directors out of work, I'll at least have had some on-the-job training as a design-machine programer [sic]."

Herzogenrath & Nierhoff-Wielk, Ex Machina—Frühe Computergrafik bis 1979. Ex Machina—Early Computer Graphics up to 1978 (2007) 243.

Mansell, in London, began publication of The National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints: a Cumulative Author List Representing Library of Congress Printed Cards and Titles Reported by other American Libraries. One of the largest sets of printed volumes ever published, and most probably the largest printed bibliography, it was completed in 1981 in 754 folio volumes, containing a total of over 12,000,000 entries on 528,000 pages, and occupying approximately 130 feet of shelf space. It was produced manually by photocopying library catalogue cards.

NUC was superceded around 1995 by bibliographical databases such as OCLC WorldCat on the Internet.

In this year 32,393 books are produced in the United Kingdom.

Houghton Mifflin of Boston published The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

"The AHD broke ground among dictionaries by using corpus linguistics for compiling word-frequencies and other information. It took the innovative step of combining prescriptive information (how language should be used) and descriptive information (how it actually is used). The descriptive information was derived from actual texts. Citations were based on a million-word, three-line citation database[the Brown Corpus] prepared by Brown University linguist Henry Kucera" (Wikipedia article on The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, accessed 06-07-2010).

Books on Tape Corporation started rental plans for the distribution of audio books.

Atex, founded in Massachusetts in 1973, worked with the Minneapolis Star newspaper to develop the first electronic pagination system that allowed the creation and output of full editorial pages, eliminating the need for manual paste-up of strips of film.

The Atex system featured "Atex Messaging" which is widely believed to be the forerunner of both email and instant messenger applications. Atex publishing systems were "based on highly modified Dec PDP-11 minicomputers, designed to produce news sections of newspapers. The systems included clustered CPUs, a distributed file system and dumb terminals that displayed memory-mapped video and featured keyboards with up to 140 keys: Distinctively, the cursor keys were on the left-hand side. A custom operating system tied everything together."

Ted Nelson (Theodor Holm Nelson) self-published from South Bend, Indiana, the book, Computer Lib / Dream Machines, sub-titled You can and must understand computers NOW. Nelson issued this together with: Dream Machines: New freedoms through computer screens—a minority report. In his book Tools for Thought: The History and Future  of Mind-Expanding Technology Howard Rheingold called Computer Lib "the best-selling underground manifesto of the microcomputer revolution."

in 1987 Microsoft Press reissued Nelson's book with an introduction by Stewart Brand, of the Whole Earth Catalog. 

"Both the 1974 and 1987 editions have a highly unconventional layout, with two front covers (one for Computer Lib and the other for Dream Machines) and the division between the two books marked by text (for the other side) rotated 180°. The text itself is broken up into many sections, with simulated pull-quotes, comics, side bars, etc., similar to a magazine layout" (Wikipedia article on Computer Lib /Dream Machines, accessed 03-08-2012).

In 1974 Italian Jesuit priest Roberto Busa of Gallarate and Milan, Italy, published the first volume of his Index Thomisticus, a massive index verborum or concordance of the writings of Thomas Aquinas. The work was complete in 56 printed volumes in 1980. This concordance, which Busa began to conceptualize in 1946, and started developing in 1949, was the pioneering large scale humanities computing project, though it began before electronic computers were available. Writing in 1951, Busa believed that electric punched card tabulating technology, the technology then available, would enable completion in four years of a work which would otherwise have taken "half a century." In spite of this optimism, the project required further computing advances and 40 years till completion.

"A purely mechanical concordance program, where words are alphabetized according to their graphic forms (sequences of letters), could have produced a result in much less time, but Busa would not be satisfied with this. He wanted to produce a "lemmatized" concordance where words are listed under their dictionary headings, not under their simple forms. His team attempted to write some computer software to deal with this and, eventually, the lemmatization of all 11 million words was completed in a semiautomatic way with human beings dealing with word forms that the program could not handle. Busa set very high standards for his work. His volumes are elegantly typeset and he would not compromise on any levels of scholarship in order to get the work done faster. He has continued to have a profound influence on humanities computing, with a vision and imagination that reach beyond the horizons of many of the current generation of practitioners who have been brought up with the Internet. A CD-ROM of the Aquinas material appeared in 1992 that incorporated some hypertextual features ("cum hypertextibus") and was accompanied by a user guide in Latin, English, and Italian. Father Busa himself was the first recipient of the Busa award in recognition of outstanding achievements in the application of information technology to humanistic research, and in his award lecture in Debrecen, Hungary, in 1998 he reflected on the potential of the World Wide Web to deliver multimedia scholarly material accompanied by sophisticated analysis tools" (Hockey, "The History of Humanities Computing," A Companion to Digital Humanities, Shreibman, Siemens, and Unsworth[eds.] [2004] 4).

In 2005 a web-based version of the Index Thomisticus made its debut, designed and programmed by E. Alarcón and E. Bernot, in collaboration with Busa. In 2006 the Index Thomisticus Treebank project (directed by Marco Passarotti) started the syntactic annotation of the entire corpus.

Byte, one of the first personal computer magaines, began publication in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

The Barnes & Noble bookstore chain, purchased by Leonard Riggio in 1971,  became the first bookseller in America to discount books, by selling New York Times best-selling titles at 40% off the publishers’ list price.

Dr. Dobbs' Journal of Tiny Basic Calisthenics and Orthodontia was first published from Menlo Park, California, with the computing/orthodontic subtitle, "Running Light without Overbyte."

As irrelevant as the title might have been, Dr. Dobbs' Journal was the first journal focused on software for personal computers. It evolved into the non-orthodontic Dr. Dobbs' Software Tools for the Professional Programmer.

Between 1977 and 1979 computer scientist Donald E. Knuth of Stanford University created the TeX page-formatting language and the Metafont character shape specification language, originally as a way of improving the typography of his own publications. These he described in four publications in 1979:

1. "Mathematical Typography," Bulletin (New Series) of the American Mathematical Society, March 1979, Vol. 1, No. 2, 337-72. Josiah Willard Gibbs Lecture, January 4, 1978.

2. TEX, a system for technical text.  A manual published by the American Mathematical Society, June, 1979.

3. Metafont, a system for alphabet design, September, 1979.

4. In December 1979 Digital Press in Bedford, Massachusetts, a division of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), together with the American Mathematical Society issued these three documents in book form as TEX and Metafont. New Directions in Typesetting, with a Foreward by C. Gordon Bell, then Vice President of Engineering at DEC, and a Preface by Knuth.

Preceding the development and wide-acceptance of PostScript (1984) and TrueType (1991), expectations for the impact of TeX and Metafont were appropriately great within the computer community. As a reflection of this, I quote Gordon Bell's 1979 introduction in full:

"Don Knuth's Tau Epison Chi (TeX) is potentially the most significant invention in typesetting in this century. It introduces a standard language for computer typography and in terms of importance could rank near the introduction of the Gutenberg press. The TeX system:

"•understands typography from individual charcters to page design;

"•permits any typewriter, word processing system, computer-based editor, or TeX system editor to be used as an input device with a standard language;

"•can typeset various formats and languages;

"•is structured to be user-extendable to virtually all applications.

"These improvements are benchmarks in typesetting and text creation. To date, computer-based typesetting systems have simply facilitated typesetting. Moreover, the proliferation of word processing systems makes possible the widespread direct transmission of text to typesetting without the intervening typesetting process—provided we use the standard language that TeX offers.

"A direct link between text input and typesetting will permit a drastic restructuring of the journal- and book-publishing industry, allowing it to be oriented substantially more toward the author. Unitl now, even authors with word processing equipment have been unable to participate in the representation of their message in print. Prior to Gutenberg's invention, manuscripts were conceived and designed simultaneously, and often the author's hand shaped the entire final product. The results were beautiful and varied, in contrast to the manufacture of most modern books, which vary only in cover design. With TeX, moreover not only can the author influence his own format and representation, but he also can produce more accurate material than can be rapidly mass-produced, shortening the time between idea and dissemination.

"TeX is significant as a standard language because of the way it understands typography using a framework of boxes and glue in a hierarchical fashion so that any font, page layout, or other typesetting parameter can be set. This is in striking contrast to most typesetting systems, which are built with no generality. Finally, the input form is user-defined by means of a macroprocessor so that virutally any text can be input and can control the typography part of the program. It is this generality and segmentation of function that makes TeX significant.

"This book is about much more than just the Tex system. The Gibbs Lecture presents the twin themes of how typography can help mathematics and how mathematics can help typography, and the material on METAFONT is intriguing and useful in its description of the use of mathematics in type design.

"While the emphasis of TeX is on mathematics, the system is equally applicable to and will no doubt be used in many other domains. Don Knuth, in fact, shows us precisely how the system can humanize basic communciations.

"At Digital, we hope to use TeX immediately, I urge others to adopt and use it so that the language standard can be established.

My copy of the first printing of TeX and Metafont was presented to the San Francisco book designer and book historian Adrian Wilson in February, 1980. Wilson worked in both letterpress and offset and designed many prize-winning books. On the first page of Bell's Foreward Wilson made pencil notes in the margin, taking issue with three points in the third paragraph. It is not clear that Wilson read past the Foreward; however, the points that Wilson made remain valid:

1. "Prior to Gutenberg's invention, manuscripts were conceived and designed simultaneously, and often the author's hand shaped the entire final product." Here Wilson commented, "Very rarely!"  I am unaware of any manuscripts prior to printing, except perhaps for author's manuscripts or the extremely few autograph manuscripts that survived, where it can be demonstrated that the author "shaped the final product" in the sense of its physical appearance on the page rather than in the textual sense. In addition, the process of manuscript copying by different scribes tended to make each manuscript copy different in subtle, or not so subtle ways, from each other.

2. "The results were beautiful and varied, in contrast to the manufacture of most modern books, which vary only in cover design." Here Wilson commented, "not so."  Bell's statement ignored, of course, the incredible diversity of all aspects of the design of "modern books" in addition to their covers.

3. "With TeX, moreover, not only can the author influence his own format and representation. . . ." Here Wilson commented, "author as designer! no." Before desktop publishing (1984-85) the ability of authors who were not programmers to design an acceptable looking book was, of course, highly limited. Even in 2012, when I wrote this database entry, few authors without expert knowledge of book design or graphic arts expertise could produce a genuinely attractively designed book.

Knuth continued his typographic work, issuing a second and larger volume entitled Digital Typography in 1999. This contains a remarkable collection of stories and technical papers concerning the continuation of his work in typography. In 2012 TeX and Metafont remained niche products for composing and scientific books and papers with the market dominated by PostScript and TrueType. As Richard Southall commented in Printer's type in the twentieth century. Manufacturing and design methods (2005) 224, footnote 6, "Donald Knuth's Metafont language, with its radically different approach to the specification of character image configurations, might have provided an alternative, and many ways a better, approach to typemaking if the interface it presented to designers had not been so forbidding."

On March 12, 2013 at a meeting of the Colophon Club in Berkeley, California I heard Knuth deliver a fascinating presentation on how and why he developed TeX and Metafont.  From this I gathered more general understanding of Knuth's system, which from the very beginning he placed in the public domain, and from which he never intended to profit. A more technical explanation of why TeX and Metafont remained niche products may be found in this posting from the Typophile.com website on December 15, 2004: 

"Metafont can only produce bitmap fonts which is a severe limitation. Nowadays, people usually create outline fonts since they are scalable and usable in different resolutions. There are tools that convert .mf to Type 1 or TrueType but this is done by autotracing which results in rather poor quality.

"There is a related product called Metapost, created by John Hobby, which allows parametric creation of PostScript graphics. This was later extended by Boguslaw Jackowski, Piotr Strzelczyk and Janusz Nowacki to MetaType1, an outline-based parametric font creation system. However, just like many other parametric font creation systems (e.g. Font Chameleon, Infinifont, LiveType), it never gained the necessary momentum. With no professional support and no solid user interface, the tools for creating these sorts of fonts were never able to reach a broad user base. Even Multiple Master fonts that had good user interface tools (Fontographer, FontLab) were dropped because handling them turned out to be too complicated and the revenues were too limited.

"Developing mature applications is a long and laborous effort. The commercial market is difficult, which is visible with the fact that numerous efforts such as Fontographer, FontStudio , TypeDesigner or RoboFog "died". The open source community is too weak to develop a good specialty tool of that sort (open source projects work well with mass products such as Mozilla or OpenOffice, with hundreds of engineers working in their spare time or on government/organizational funding).

"Today, with the exception of DTL FontMaster and FontForge (which is free), FontLab is the only font creation application that is actively being developed. First version of FontLab was created 12 years ago and in that process, we have learned that a good user interface is crucial to a success.

"Font creators are mostly designers, not engineers. They need visual tools. Also, type is often too subtle to rely on parametric creation. While it would be tempting to re-use the exactly same shape of a serif on n, m, i and l, often, subtle changes need to be made for best effect. The more subtle and refined the letterforms get, the less the parametric approach is useful. Donald Knuth's Computer Modern isn't a particularly well-designed typeface and frankly, I have never seen a good typeface made with Metafont.

"When people make a profession out of creating type, i.e. they make their living on type design, the issue of a tool being free becomes less relevant. Also, tools such as Metafont are only nominally free. There are no licensing costs but there are substantial costs of maintenance, support and learning. The learning curves are steep, the user communities are small and not integrated, there is no professional support. Therefore, if you work with tools such as Metafont, you're often left on your own. This is a fact often overlooked by those who advertise free or open source software.

"There is a good selection of links about parametric font creation at: http://www.myfonts.com/activity/parametric-fonts/" (accessed 03-13-2013).

Elizabeth L. Eisenstein published The Printing Press as an Angent of Change. Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe.

Quoting from the Wikipedia, from its perspective of digital information and the Internet, an evaluation of the impact of this printed book on book history:

"In this work she [Eisenstein] focuses on the printing press's functions of dissemination, standardization, and preservation and the way these functions aided the progress of the Protestant Reformation, the Renaissance, and the Scientific Revolution. Eisenstein's work brought historical method, rigor, and clarity to earlier ideas of Marshall McLuhan and others, about the general social effects of such media transitions. This work provoked debate in the academic community from the moment it was published and is still inspiring conversation and new research today. Her work also influenced later thinking about the subsequent development of digital media. Her work on the transition from manuscript to print influenced thought about new transitions of print text to digital formats, including multimedia and new ideas about the definition of text."

In 1980 Mead Data Central of Miamisburg, Ohio, introduced the NEXIS service, providing online texts of various print publications.

Russell Sipe founded Computer Gaming World as a bi-monthly publication. Computer Gaming World was the first magazine specifically devoted to computer games. The magazine published 268 issues before being replaced with Games for Windows: The Official Magazine. This went to online-only publication on April 8, 2008. 

You can download the first 100 issues of Computer Gaming World at the Computer Gaming World Museum.

American computer scientist John Warnock and Chuck Gerschke founded Adobe Systems.  At Adobe Warnock developed the PostScript page description language, a simplified version of the InterPress language that he developed at Xerox PARC.

Work began on computerizing the text of the Oxford English Dictionary, defining "414,825 words backed by five million quotations, of which some two million were actually printed in the dictionary text." This required retyping the entire text into a database.

"And so the New Oxford English Dictionary (NOED) project began. More than 120 keyboarders of International Computaprint Corporation in Tampa, Florida, and Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, USA, started keying in over 350,000,000 characters, their work checked by 55 proof-readers in England. Retyping the text alone was not sufficient; all the information represented by the complex typography of the original dictionary had to be retained, which was done by marking up the content in SGML. A specialized search engine and display software were also needed to access it. Under a 1985 agreement, some of this software work was done at the University of Waterloo, Canada, at the Centre for the New Oxford English Dictionary, led by F.W. Tompa and Gaston Gonnet; this search technology went on to become the basis for the Open Text Corporation. Computer hardware, database and other software, development managers, and programmers for the project were donated by the British subsidiary of IBM; the colour syntax-directed editor for the project, LEXX, was written by Mike Cowlishaw of IBM. The University of Waterloo, in Canada, volunteered to design the database."

The second edition of the OED was published on paper in 1989. 

American political scientist Ithiel de Sola Pool of MIT published "Tracking the Flow of Information," Science 221 (1983) 609-19.

This study, which estimated the growth trends of the “amount of words” transmitted by 17 major communications media in the United States from 1960 to 1977, was the first to show empirically the declining relevance of print media relative to electronic media in terms of information flow.

"By using words transmitted and words attended to as common denominators, novel indexes were constructed of growth trends in seventeen major communications media from 1960 to 1977. There have been extraordinary rates of growth in the transmission of electronic communications, but much lower rates of growth in the material that peole actually consume, representing the phenomenon often labeled information overload. Growth in print media has sharply decelerated, a a close relationship is found between the cheapness of a medium and its rate of growth."

American scientist and inventor Bob Doyle, his wife Holly, and son Rob introduced the first Desktop Publishing program, MacPublisher, for the Macintosh.  

"MacPublisher introduced WYSIWYG layout for multi-column text and graphics, but it would not have been possible without graphics primitives like QuickDraw that Bill Atkinson had originally developed for the Apple Lisa computer. QuickDraw was incorporated in the PASCAL toolbox for the new Macintosh and was the basis for MacPaint." (Wikipedia article on MacPublisher).

Acorn Computers Ltd, Philips, Logica and the BBC (with some funding from the European Commission's ESPRIT programme) marked the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book, an 11th century census of England, with the multimedia  BBC Domesday Project.  This publication is frequently cited as an example of digital obsolescence.

The Project  "included a new 'survey' of the United Kingdom, in which people, mostly school children, wrote about geography, history or social issues in their local area or just about their daily lives. This was linked with maps, and many colour photos, statistical data, video and 'virtual walks'. Over 1 million people participated in the project. The project also incorporated professionally-prepared video footage, virtual reality tours of major landmarks and other prepared datasets such as the 1981 census.

"The project was stored on adapted laserdiscs in the LaserVision Read Only Memory (LV-ROM) format, which contained not only analog video and still pictures, but also digital data, with 300 MB of storage space on each side of the disc. The discs were mastered, produced, and tested by Philips at their Eindhoven headquarters factory. Viewing the discs required an Acorn BBC Master expanded with an SCSI controller and an additional coprocessor controlled a Philips VP415 "Domesday Player", a specially-produced laserdisc player. The user interface consisted of the BBC Master's keyboard and a trackball (known at the time as a trackerball). The software for the project was written in BCPL (a precursor to C), to make cross platform porting easier, although BCPL never attained the popularity that its early promise suggested it might.

In 2002, there were great fears that the discs would become unreadable as computers capable of reading the format had become rare (and drives capable of accessing the discs even more rare). Aside from the difficulty of emulating the original code, a major issue was that the still images had been stored on the laserdisc as single-frame analogue video, which were overlaid by the computer system's graphical interface. The project had begun years before JPEG image compression and before truecolour computer video cards had become widely available.

"However, the BBC later announced that the CAMiLEON project (a partnership between the University of Leeds and University of Michigan) had developed a system capable of accessing the discs using emulation techniques. CAMiLEON copied the video footage from one of the extant Domesday laserdiscs. Another team, working for the UK National Archives (who hold the original Domesday Book) tracked down the original 1-inch videotape masters of the project. These were digitised and archived to Digital Betacam.

"A version of one of the discs was created that runs on a Windows PC. This version was reverse-engineered from an original Domesday Community disc and incorporates images from the videotape masters. It was initially available only via a terminal at the National Archives headquarters in Kew, Surrey but has been available since July 2004 on the web.

"The head of the Domesday Project, Mike Tibbets, has criticized the bodies to which the archive material was originally entrusted" (Wikipedia article on BBC Domesday Project, accessed 12-21-2008).

In 1984 John Warnock and Charles Geschke of Adobe Systems, San Jose, California, marketed the PostScript page description language by releasing releasing PostScript Level 1, enabling scalable PostScript digital type fonts and desktop publishing.

In 1984 under the pen name of Emmanuel Goldstein (an Orwellian allusion to 1984), Eric Gordon Corley began publication of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, 

"a quarterly American publication that specializes in publishing technical information on a variety of subjects including telephone switching systems, Internet protocols and services, as well as general news concerning the computer "underground" and left wing, and sometimes (but not recently), anarchist issues.

"The magazine's name comes from the phreaker discovery in the 1960s that the transmission of a 2600 hertz tone (which could be produced perfectly with a plastic toy whistle given away free with Cap'n Crunch cereal—discovered by friends of John Draper) over a long-distance trunk connection gained access to "operator mode" and allowed the user to explore aspects of the telephone system that were not otherwise accessible. The magazine was given its name by David Ruderman, who co-founded the magazine with his college friend and roommate, Eric Corley. It was first published in 1984, coinciding with the book of the same name and the break-up of AT&T. Ruderman ended his direct involvement with the magazine three years later.

"The magazine is published and edited by its co-founder Emmanuel Goldstein (a pen name of Eric Corley and allusion to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four) . . . .

"The magazine offers free advertising for subscribers. Many subscribers who have been imprisoned will take out personal ads seeking new friends and penpals" (Wikipedia article on 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, accessed 01-17-2010).

Three BBS SysOps --  "Grandmaster Ratte" (aka Swamp Ratte'), Franken Gibe, and Sid Vicious -- founded the Cult of the Dead Cow, also known as cDc Communications, a computer hacker and DIY media organization.  They published what may be the first underground ezine.

Apple, Cupertino, California, introduced the LaserWriter laser printer. It cost $6,995. The Mac's ability to run PageMaker for "desktop publishing" in association with Apple's LaserWriter printer caused sales of the Mac to take off.

Paul Brainerd, founder of Aldus Corporation, Seattle, Washington, introduced PageMaker, the first widely-used WYZIWIG page layout program for personal computers.

Initially PageMaker ran exclusively on the Apple MacIntosh, but a PC version followed in 1986, running under Windows 1.0.

To assist in marketing the software Brainerd coined the term “desktop publishing.”

Aldus Corporation was purchased by Adobe Systems in 1994.

Franklin Computer Corporation, Burlington, New Jersey, introduced Spelling Ace, an electronic spelling corrector. This may be considered the first handheld electronic book or e-book (eBook).

The magazine High Frontiers renamed itself Reality Hackers to better reflect its drug culture and computer themes. In 1989 it changed its name to Mondo 2000. In this form it influenced the development of cyberpunk culture until its closure in 1998.

In 1987 American author, critic, and professor of English and media studies at Vassar College Michael Joyce composed Afternoon, a story. This was first offered to the public as a demonstration of the hypertext authoring system Storyspace announced in 1987 at the first Association for Computing Machinery Hypertext conference in a paper by Michael Joyce and Jay David Bolter. In 1990, Afternoon, a story was published on diskette and distributed by Eastgate Systems, producers of Storyspace. 

Afternoon, a story is considered the first hypertext fiction (hyperficiton) a non-linear, interactive electronic literary form as compared to traditional linear fiction.  Hypertext fiction was preceded by nonlinear printed narratives such as James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) in which a nonlinear narrative and interactive narrative was achieved through internal references within the printed text.

Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair began publication on paper of the zine bOING bOING, "The World's Greatest Neurozine." The magazine became a founding influence in the development of cyberpunk. It became a website in 1995, and was relaunched as a blog—Boing Boing, "a directory of wonderful things," in 2000.

The Library of Congress began making its collections available in digital form through the American Memory project. Initially the files for American Memory were distributed to 44 schools and libraries on CD-ROMS.

Adobe, San Jose, California, introduced the Portable Document Format (PDF) to aid in the transfer of documents across platforms. PDF is a file format used to represent a document in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system used to create it.

Apple introduced TrueType in competition with Adobe's PostScript. The first TrueType fonts available were Times Roman, Helvetica and Courier.

The School of Information and Library Science and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill  founded an archive and information sharing environment designed to be "contributor-driven and content-managed." Originally one of the SunSITES, sponsored by Sun Microsystems, it was a pioneering collaboration of electronic librarianship, journalism and telecommunication.

"After living under the name MetaLab for a period of time, the environment is now known as ibiblio. It has grown to host one of the Internet's most active and respected software archives, coexisting with music archives, large text database projects, and special exhibits. The diverse management and content models of ibiblio complement and inform each other to give users the most useful and relevant information about a variety of topics. Examples include: single content manager archives ranging from folk music to travelogues, academic and librarian-managed archives, historical enthusiast-managed archives such as the Pearl Harbor archives, author-managed archives involving over 100 active authors with special interests such as the Linux Documentation Project.

"Through these different types of archive models, the resources available on ibiblio range from free applications and operating systems software to graphics and art, from fiction, poetry, literature, and music to religion, politics and cultural studies. ibiblio also offers streaming audio and video. ibiblio currently averages about 1.5 million information requests a day." (ibiblio, accessed 03-19-2009).

"In 1993, Dr. Glen Barry invented blogging, defined as web based commentary, linking to other articles. The "Forest Protection Blog" (originally entitled "Gaia's Forest Conservation Archives") at http://forests.org/blog/ was also the first political blog, as Dr. Barry campaigned there for forest protection and documented these efforts as his Ph.D. project. The first blog initially used the gopher protocol, and has been on the web continuously since Jan. 1995, making it the web's first and longest continuously running blog. Prior to this, Dr. Barry provided forest conservation materials via email and bulletin board since 1989. The work has since evolved into the world's largest environmental portals at http://www.ecoearth.info/" (Wikipedia article on History of blogging timeline, accessed 04-21-2009).

Wired 1.01, the first issue of a magazine of cyberculture, was published in San Francisco under the editorship of Kevin Kelly.

Tim O’Reilly, Sebastapol, California, launched the Global Network Navigator. This was the first web portal and the first true commercial website. According to a statement by Tim O'Reilly, it also contained the first online advertising. The Global Network Navigator was sold to America Online in 1995.

The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper in Japan achieved a daily audited circulation greater than 10 million printed copies. 

The U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, which began publication of statistics in print in 1886, began publishing statistics on its website.

Feeling isolated after having recently moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, and having observed people helping one another online at The Well and Usenet, Craig Naymark founded craigslist, as a bulletin board for social events.  It evolved into a "central network of online communities, featuring free online classified advertisements – with jobs, internships, housing, personals, erotic services, for sale/barter/wanted, services, community, gigs, resume, and pets categories – and forums on various topics." Craigslist eventually made a profit by charging under-market fees for job ads in ten cities and for brokered apartment listings in New York City. By providing most classified advertising for free it undermined the traditional income stream of printed newspapers.

Ward Cunningham, Portland, Oregon, established the first wiki, the WikiWikiWeb on the c2.com domain for Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc.

Wiki "was named by Cunningham, who remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter employee telling him to take the 'Wiki Wiki' shuttle bus that runs between the airport's terminals. According to Cunningham, 'I chose wiki-wiki as an alliterative substitute for 'quick' and thereby avoided naming this stuff quick-web.' Cunningham was in part inspired by Apple's HyperCard. Apple had designed a system allowing users to create virtual 'card stacks' supporting links among the various cards. Cunningham developed Vannevar Bush's ideas by allowing users to 'comment on and change one another's text' (Wikipedia article on Wiki, accessed 12-29-2009).

♦ You can watch a video of an interview of Ward Cunningham with John Gage at the Computer History Museum in 2006 at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx6nNqSASGo

University Librarian and Director of Information Resources Michael A. Keller and Stanford University Libraries founded HighWire Press. Its initial publication was the online production of the weekly Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), "the most highly cited (and second largest) peer-reviewed journal."

A portion of its mission statement (June 1995) included the following:

"Network-Based Scholarly Publishing:

A Prospectus

The Problems:

The problems of scholarly publishing - particularly for science, technology and medical information (STM) - are well documented:

It takes too long for authors to get work into the literature because of the author, reviewer, publisher, library, reader handoffs.

It is difficult and time consuming for readers to sort through all that is published.

It is increasingly expensive for libraries to acquire STM materials, which are advancing in price to research libraries at four to six times the c.p.i.

It is becoming impractical for publishers to deliver a timely and complete product that meets the needs of research scientists. As single events, these problems are each frustrating to scholars and those who serve them. In combination, these impediments are a significant barrier, and challenge the productivity and quality of science.

The Projects:

The Network Publishing project, dubbed "The HighWire Press," provides models of solutions for these problems by taking advantage of the special circumstances of scholarly communication - as distinct from entertainment or trade publishing - in the context of a University community: the writers and readers of scholarly materials are in the same profession, writing for each other, they are located in similar environments; and they do not seek profit from their publishing activities, which are a means to an end for them. Because of network-based communication technologies, the apparatus of a large publishing operation is becoming unnecessary for communication of scholarly results; this is true for the same reason that desktop publishing technologies a decade ago allowed a shift from large design and composition shops to desktop authorship backed up by small, responsive print shops. Essentially, our projects attempt to "re-engineer" traditional scholarly publishing to focus on formal, structured communication among the community of scholars."

The Corporation for National Research Initiiatives, sponsored by DARPA, began publication, only on the web, of D-lib Magazine, the Magazine of the Digital Library Forum.

According to UNESCO 968,735 new different printed book titles were produced in the world in 2996.

In 1996 Russian microminiature artist, Anatoly Konenko of Omsk, southwestern Siberia, issued what was then the world's smallest book printed on paper — an edition of Chekhov's very short story, Chameleon. It measures just .9 by .9 millimeters, not much larger than a grain of salt, and has 30 pages and three color illustrations. The print cannot be read by the naked eye. The edition was limited to 50 copies in English, and 50 copies in Russian.

Pschologist John Suler of Rider University, Lawrenceville, New Jersey, published The Psychology of Cyberspace as an online hypertext book.

This book has been cited as a founding work in the developing fields of cyberspychology and cybertherapy, in which avatars assist with treatment.

The New York Times interactive web edition began.

In April 1996, during her junior year at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Internet personality and lifecaster Jennifer Ringley began the popular website, JenniCam. She was the first real full time online webcam girl.

"Previously, live webcams transmitted static shots from cameras aimed through windows or at coffee pots. Ringley's innovation was simply to allow others to view her daily activities.

"In June 2008, CNET hailed JenniCam as one of the greatest defunct websites in history.

"Regarded by some as a conceptual artist, Ringley viewed her site as a straight-forward document of her life. She did not wish to filter the events that were shown on her camera, so sometimes she was shown nude or engaging in sexual behavior, including sexual intercourse and masturbation. This was a new use of Internet technology in 1996 and viewers were stimulated both for its sociological implications and for sexual arousal. Surveillance became conceptual art, as noted by Mark Tribe in 'New Media Art':

In Web sites like JenniCAM, in which a young woman installed Web cameras in her home to expose her everyday actions to online viewers. . . surveillance became a source of voyeuristic and exhibitionistic excitement. . . Institutional surveillance and the invasion of privacy have been widely explored by New Media artists.'

"Ringley's genuine desires to maintain the purity of the cam-eye view of her life eventually created the need to establish that she was within her rights as an adult to broadcast such information, in the legal sense, and that it was not harmful to other adults. Unlike later for-profit webcam services, Ringley did not spend her day displaying her private parts, and she spent much more time discussing her romantic life than she did her sex life. Ringley maintained her webcam site for seven years" (Wikipedia article on Jennifer Ringley, accessed 05-08-2009).

The last printed edition of Friedrich Konrad Beilstein's Handbuch der organischen Chemie, was published in 1998. The first edition of this work, published in 2 volumes in Hamburg, Germany, in 1881, covered 1,500 compounds in 2,200 pages. By 1998 the research, incorporating information from 1779 to the present, grew to more than 7,000,000 compounds, and the annual subscription price to the printed edition reached about $40,000 per year.

After termination of the printed edition, publication of Beilstein continued online under a number of different names, including Crossfire Beilstein. Since 2009, the content has been maintained and distributed by Elsevier Information Systems in Frankfurt under the product name "Reaxys"

Norman, From Gutenberg to the Internet (2005) 11.

According to Bowker, as cited by Robert Darnton in Publisher's Weekly, 700,000 new book titles were published worldwide during 1998.

In 1999 64,711 new books were published on paper in the United States. 

The Early English Books Online project, a joint effort between the University of Michigan, Oxford University and ProQuest Information and Learning, began to provide searchable texts of all 125,000 English books printed from 1475 to 1700. This was a development of a project that began in 1938 to microfilm all English books in the timeframe.

In 1999 German industrial designer Birgit Lohmann co-founded Designboom in Milan Italy with Massimo Mini. Designboom was the first independent web publication dedicated to architecture and design.

"Based in Milan with her family, Birgit Lohmann runs the website of her own creation, Designboom. At Designboom, people from around the world can compete in design competitions, view design jobs and share their design work.  

"Having created one of the go-to websites for design knowledge, Birgit Lohmann is certainly on the cutting edge. We had the chance to speak with her about the role trend spotting plays in her work with Designboom.

"1. How did you get involved with Designboom and what motivates you to continue?  

"I practiced as an industrial designer and product development manager for 15 years, I worked for a number of Italian architects and master designers which include Achille Castiglioni, Vico Magistretti, Bruno Munari, Enzo Mari and Renzo Piano. At that time we did not use computers, we drew by hand and made lots of models and prototypes. I was able to work on the first chair using polypropylene and developed the tools for producing it. I enjoyed the work so much, that I did not plan to work on my own, but then there was a time when the ‘eternal assistant’ aspired for more autonomy.  

"Two of the things I like best - spending time in nature and figuring out how things work. I got to combine these things through Internet publishing. Massimo Mini and I founded Designboom in 1999. We left Milan with our two children (at that time 9 and 5 years old) and lived in Bali for a while. In between tropical plants in our garden we created an open air office with 4 desks, where the kids did drawings and homework (which was sent to us by email from their Italian school teachers) and we created and updated Designboom.  

"1999 - we are the ‘grandparents’ of online publishing in the field of art, architecture and design. When we started there were only two other relevant sites, the American Core77.com and the Belgian DesignAddict.com. Core77 was created by students inside the university and this targeted their audience - students and young professionals. Designaddict was initially a XX century design collector’s database. Designboom, because of our work experience, always reached design professionals. The ‘real world’ is a place where things change all the time, and it is essential to be updated continuously.  

"Based in Milan, our small international team is still made up of designers, not journalists. We talk about real experience, cultural intents and influences, restraints and contradictions. We stimulate a global discussion and the rapport that we’ve established with our readers and the greater design community keeps us motivated. It’s a lot of work, not exactly a typical 9-to-5 job, but we spend our days sharing ideas with people of all ages and backgrounds from more than 200 countries. Seriously - what could be better?!" (http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/birgit-lohmann-interview. accessed 01-15-2013).

In 2000 there were 3,200,000 new printed book titles listed for sale in the United States. The number of book titles in print in the world may have been about 8,000,000 at that time.

The world market for printed books (pBooks) was estimated at $25 billion. At this time the world market for eBooks was estimated at $100 million.

Using money from the dot.com Bomis, American entrepreneur Jimmy Wales founded the web-encyclopedia, Nupedia in San Diego, California, hiring philosopher Larry Sanger as editor-in-chief.

"Unlike Wikipedia, Nupedia was not a wiki; it was instead characterized by an extensive peer-review process, designed to make its articles of a quality comparable to that of professional encyclopedias. Nupedia wanted scholars to volunteer content for free. Before it ceased operating, Nupedia produced 24 articles that completed its review process (three articles also existed in two versions of different lengths), and 74 more articles were in progress.

"In June 2008, CNET hailed Nupedia as one of the greatest defunct websites in history" (Wikipedia article on Nupedia, accessed 05-23-2009).

The Oxford English Dictionary Online (OED Online) became available to subscribers.

Steven Pendergast, and Mindwise Media LLC owned by Scott Pendergast founded Fictionwise.com. Fictionwise.com became one of the largest distributors of ebooks in North America, and was acquired by Barnes & Noble in March 2009.

On January 15, 2001 American entrepreneur Jimmy Wales, American philosopher Larry Sanger, and others founded the Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, as an English language project.

"In its first year, Wikipedia generated 20,000 articles, and had acquired 200 regular volunteers working to add more (this compares with the 55,000 articles in the Columbia [Encyclopedia], all subject to rigorous standards of editing and fact-checking, though this in itself was a small-scale enterprise compared to the behemoths of the industry like the Encyclopaedia Britannica, whose 1989 edition covered 400,000 different topics). By the end of 2002, the number of entries on Wikipedia had more than doubled. But it was only in 2003, once it became apparent that there was nothing to stop it continuing to double in size (which is what it did), that Wikipedia started to attract attention outside the small tech-community that had noticed its launch. In early 2004, there were 188,000 articles; by 2006, 895,000. In 2007 there were signs that the pace of growth might start to level off, and only in 2008 did it begin to look like the numbers might be stabilising. The English-language version of Wikipedia currently has more than 2,870,000 entries, a number that has increased by 500,000 over the last 12 months. However, the English-language version is only one of more than 250 different versions in other languages. German, French, Italian, Polish, Dutch and Japanese Wikipedia all have more than half a million entries each, with plenty of room to add. Xhosa Wikipedia currently has 110. Meanwhile, the Encyclopaedia Britannica had managed to increase the number of its entries from 400,000 in 1989 to 700,000 by 2007" (Runciman, "Like Boiling a Frog," Review of "The Wikipedia Revolution" by Andrew Lih, London Review of Books, 28 May 2009, accessed 05-23-2009).

At the meeting of the San Francisco chapter of the Women's National Book Association, David Spiselman predicted that ebooks would be a 3.1 billion dollar business by 2004. He also predicted that by 2004 "screen quality will be superior to paper."

The online music store subscription service, Rhapsody, was launched in Seattle, Washington in December 2001.

"Downloaded files come with restrictions on their use, enforced by Helix, Rhapsody's version of digital rights management enforced on AAC+ or WMA files. The service also sells individual MP3s without digital rights management restrictions" (Wikipedia article on Rhapsody, accessed 03-18-2012).

Chinese novelist Hao Qun, under the pen name Murong Xuecun, published his first novel, Chengdu, Please Forget Me Tonight, on the website tianya.cn. 

"Mr. Murong owes his commercial success to the fact that he has found ways to practice his art and build a fan base on the Internet, outside the more heavily policed print industry.

"He addresses political issues on both a blog and a microblog account that resembles Twitter, which has nearly 1.1 million followers. He posts his novels chapter by chapter or in sections online under different pseudonyms as he writes. This Dickens-style serialization generates buzz, and the writing evolves with reader feedback. Once the book is finished or nearly so, Mr. Murong signs with a publisher. The censored print editions make money, but the Internet versions are more complete" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/world/asia/murong-xuecun-pushes-censorship-limits-in-china.html?hp, accessed 11-10-2011).

The uncensored version of Murong's novel was translated into English by Harvey Thomlinson, and published in 2010 as Leave Me Alone: A Novel of Chengdu.

"Thirty-six year old Murong - Chinese literary superstar and reclusive celebrity - twenty eight and working as a sales manager in the car industry when he started posting his first novel Chengdu Please Forget Me Tonight on the internet. In 2002 it became a cult hit amongst young middle class Chinese looking for writing that pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable literature. Chengdu Please Forget Me Tonight was eventually posted on almost all of China's online bulletin boards, and attracted around 5 million online readers. Thousands of web commentaries and impassioned debates about the book appeared, while 'formal' commentaries and critiques amounted to more than 50,000 words. The novel won Murong the New Periodical 'Person of the Year', Xinliang website's 'Most popular novel', and the China Literary Journal's 2003 literature prize" (Amazon.com, accessed 11-10-2011).

Under the  pen name  "Yoshi," a Tokyo man published the first cell phone novel, Deep Love— the story of a teenage prostitute in Tokyo.

Deep Love

"became so popular that it was published as an actual book, with 2.6 million copies sold in Japan, then spun off into a television series, a manga, and a movie. The cell phone novel became a hit mainly through word of mouth and gradually started to gain traction in China and South Korea among young adults. In Japan, several sites offer large prizes to authors (up to $100,000 US) and purchase the publishing rights to the novel."

"Cell phone or mobile phone novels called keitai shousetsu in Japanese, are the first literary genre to emerge from the cellular age via text messaging. Phone novels started out primarily read and authored by young Japanese women, on the subject of romantic fiction such as relationships, lovers, rape, love triangles, and pregnancy. However, mobile phone novels are trickling their way to a worldwide popularity on all subjects. Japanese ethos of the Internet regarding mobile phone novels are dominated by false names and forged identities. Therefore, identities of the Japanese authors of mobile phone novels are rarely disclosed. 'Net transvestites' are of the most extreme play actors of the sort. Differing from regular novels, mobile phone novels may be structured according to the author's preference. If a couple is fighting in the story, the author may choose to have the lines closely spaced and crowded. On the contrary, if the author writes a calm or soothing poem the line spacing may be further apart than normal. Overall, the line spacing of phone novels contains enough blank space for an easy read. Phone novels are meant to be read in 1,000 to 2,000-word (in China) or 70-word (in Japan) chapters via text message on mobile phones. They are downloaded in short installments and run on handsets as Java-based applications on a mobile phone. Cell phone novels often appear in three different formats: WMLD, JAVA and TXT. Maho i-Land is the largest cell phone novel site that carries more than a million titles, mainly novice writers, all which are available for free. Maho iLand provides templates for blogs and homepages. It is visited 3.5 billion times each month. In 2007 98 cell phone novels were published into books. "Love Sky" is a popular phone novel with approximately 12 million views on-line, written by "Mika", that was not only published but turned into a movie. www.textnovel.com is another popular mobile phone novel site, however, in English."

"Five out of the ten best selling novels in Japan in 2007 were originally cell phone novels" (Wikipedia article on Cell phone novel, accessed 08-23-2009).

According to Bowker, as cited by Robert Darton in Publisher's Weekly, 859,000 new book titles were published worldwide in 2003. This represented a significant increase over the 700,000 titles published in 1998.

A Federal regulatory clearinghouse, Regulations.gov, was launched as the first milestone of the Federal "E-Government eRulemaking" Initiative.

"This U.S. Government Web site encourages public participation in the federal decision-making by allowing you to view and submit comments and documents concerning federal regulations, adjudication, and other actions. Regulations.gov provides one-stop, online access to every rule published and open for comment, from more than 160 different Federal agencies.

"Regulations.gov has created universal access to the Federal regulatory process by removing barriers that previously made it difficult for the public to navigate the expanse of Federal regulatory activities. Regulations.gov is the first one-stop Internet site for the public to submit comments on all Federal rulemakings. It is also the first site that allows the public to submit comments via the Internet to virtually all Federal Agencies.

"The new generation of Regulations.gov, the eRulemaking Initiative's Federal Docket Management System (FDMS), launched in the fall of 2005, enabled the public to access entire rulemaking dockets from participating Federal Departments and Agencies. FDMS is a full-featured electronic docket management system that builds upon the capabilities of the original Regulations.gov and gives Federal rule writers and docket managers the ability to better manage their rulemaking and non-rulemaking activities. With this system, Federal Departments and Agencies can post Federal Register documents, supporting materials, and public comments on the Internet. The public can search, view, and download these documents on FDMS' public side, Regulations.gov."

Mary Flanagan, Michael Mateas, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg, Andrew Stern, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin founded the group blog Grand Text Auto. It was 
"about computer mediated and computer generated works of many forms: interactive fiction, net.art, electronic poetry, interactive drama, hypertext fiction, computer games of all sorts, shared virtual environments, and more."

In May 2009 GTxA became "an aggregator for a distributed group of blogs in which we participate. The authors of these blogs work as both theorists and developers, and are interested in authorship, design, and technology, as well as issues of interaction and reception."

Michael Hawley, a scientist at MIT, created the world's largest book-- Bhutan: a Visual Odyssey Across the Kingdom. The work, which was also one of the most beautiful books ever published, was undertaken as a philanthrophic endeavor. It has 112 pages and weighs 133 pounds on an included custom-built aluminum stand. It's page openings are 7 x 5 feet. The work was initially offered in exchange for a $10,000 contribution. In November 2008 Amazon.com was offering copies for sale for $30,000 each.

A more practical and affordable way to appreciate this spectacular volume may be the trade edition published in 2004. In February 2009 this was offered for sale by Amazon.com for $100.00. In my opinion this is one of the finest and most spectacular trade books designed, printed and bound in America, though my aging eyes are not entirely comfortable reading white text against a black background. The clothbound volume, with an unusual dust jacket printed on both sides, measures 15¼ x 12¼ inches (39 x 31 cm).

In 2004 1,200,000 unique book titles were sold. According to an article in the New York Times, only two percent sold more than 5000 copies.

According to R.R. Bowker, publisher of Books in Print, 375,000 new unique books were published in English during 2004.

Bob Stein, pioneering commercial multi-media publisher and co-founder of the Voyager Company and The Criterion Collection, co-founded The Institute for the Future of the Book, "a small think-and-do tank investigating the evolution of intellectual discourse as it shifts from printed pages to networked screens."

The Journal of Cell Biology began screening digital images submitted with electronic manuscripts to determine whether these images were manipulated in ways that misrepresented experimental results. The image-screening system that checked for image manipulation took 30 minutes per paper.

Programmer Bram Cohen, author of the peer-to-peer (P2P) BitTorrent protocol, and entrepreneur Ashwin Navin founded BitTorrent, Inc. in San Francisco.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, by November 2004 8,000,000 American adults said they had created blogs.

American journalist and non-fiction writer Richard Louv published Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder.

In this book Louv studied the relationship of children and the natural world in current and historical contexts, creating the term “nature-deficit disorder” to describe possible negative consequences to individual health and the social fabric as children move indoors as a result of immersion in television, Internet, and computer games, and away from physical contact with the natural world – particularly unstructured, solitary experience.

Louv cited research pointing to attention disorders, obesity, a dampening of creativity and depression as problems associated with a nature-deficient childhood. He amassed information on the subject from practitioners of many disciplines to make his case, and is commonly credited with helping to inspire an international movement to reintroduce children to nature.

I first learned about Louv's book in a lecture by paleontologist, educator, and television broadcaster Scott D. Sampson held at Marin Academy in San Rafael, California on October 26, 2011. Sampson's lecture was the first in a science lecture series organized by my son, Max, in his junior year in high school. An extremely engaging speaker, Sampson uses the electronic media to promote the disengagement from media, and active exploration of nature, especially in childhood. He also promotes the use of social media in promoting scientific exploration of nature by the individual in each person's locality.

Wikimania 2005: The First International Wikimedia Conference was held in Frankfurt am Main.

In response to copyright problems Google announced a moratorium on the scanning of copyrighted books for its Google Print Library Project.

Google Print morphed into the Google Print Publisher Program and the Google Print Library Program.

Global sales of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter book series surpassed 300,000,000 printed copies.

At the UC Berkeley School of Information Mitchell Kapor delivered an address entitled Content Creation by Massively Distributed Collaboration.

"The sudden and unexpected importance of the Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia created by tens of thousands of volunteers and coordinated in a deeply decentralized fashion, represents a radical new modality of content creation by massively distributed collaboration. This talk will discuss the unique principles and values which have enabled the Wikipedia community to succeed and will examine the intriguing prospects for application of these methods to a broad spectrum of intellectual endeavors."

The Google Print project morphed into Google Books.

A peer-review comparison of selected science articles in the printed Encyclopedia Britannica, published in Chicago, with 65,000 articles by 4,000 contributors, and the online user-edited Wikipedia, conducted by the journal Nature, published in London, rated the Wikipedia nearly as accurate as Britannica.

Springer, which initiated its eBook program in 2006, announced the publication of its 50,000 eBook on January 19, 2012, available through SpringerLink.com.  Springer also stated that it would digitize nearly all books it had published since its foundation in 1842.  This would increase the number of titles to over 100,000. Based on the number of titles available in January 2012, Springer claimed to be the "largest eBook publisher."

In 2006 free file-sharing of digital music on the web exceeded the sale of digital music downloads by many fold:

"Total music sales - including online - are off some 20 percent from five years ago. Songs traded freely over unlicensed Internet sites swamp the number of legal sales by thousands to one."

Apple launched iTunes U, a service that offered college-level lectures via podcasts.